USS Barry, a 2780-ton Forrest Sherman class destroyer, was built at Bath, Maine. She was commissioned in September 1956 and early the next year made her shakedown cruise to the Caribbean area and the west coast of South America. In mid-1957 Barry operated with the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea, the first of some eight deployments to that often troubled part of the World. While on a second such cruise in June-September 1958 she supported carrier operations during the Lebanon crisis. Later in 1958 and into 1959, the destroyer was fitted with a large SQS-23 sonar, giving her a distinctive "clipper" bow profile that she has carried ever since. She spent the next few years participating in sonar tests and demonstrations, plus anti-submarine warfare (ASW) exercises, in the western Atlantic and in Northern European waters.

Barry returned to the Mediterranean in June-August 1962 as part of an ASW task group and that fall took part in Cuban Missile Crisis operations. She revisited Northern Europe and the Mediterranean in 1964. During late 1965 and the first months of 1966, she conducted her only Pacific deployment, which included Vietnam War combat duty. This "round the World" cruise featured transit of the Panama Canal outbound and the Suez Canal while steaming homeward. Late in 1966, Barry served as test ship for the Mark 86 fire control system, then entered the shipyard for a two-year-long modernization that significantly altered her appearance and greatly enhanced her ASW capabilities.

Recommissioned in April 1968, Barry made her next overseas voyage, to Northern Europe, during August-December 1969 and conducted a brief Mediterranean cruise in October 1970. Between August 1972 and July 1975 she was homeported in Greece. In addition to conducting NATO exercises and anti-submarine operations, she was also present during the 1973 Middle Eastern war and the 1974 Cyprus crisis. Another Sixth Fleet deployment took place in 1977-1978, followed by a cruise through the Baltic Sea that took her as far east as Finland.

During her final Sixth Fleet tour, in March-September 1979, Barry passed through the Suez Canal to join the Middle East Force for Persian Gulf service during the very tense period that accompanied the Iranian Revolution. A second deployment to those distant waters, which were becoming increasingly familiar to U.S. Sailors, took place in 1981-1982. In November 1982, shortly after the end of that cruise, USS Barry was decommissioned. Stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in January 1983, the ship was towed to the Washington, D.C., in the fall of that year. Moored at the historic Washington Navy Yard, she has since served as the Navy's display ship in the Nation's Capital.

USS Barry was named in honor of Commodore John Barry (1745-1803), one of the most important leaders of the early United States Navy.