USS Blue, a 1,500 ton Bagley class destroyer, was built at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia. Commissioned in August 1937, she operated for a year in the western Atlantic and Caribbean, then transferred to the Pacific to join the Battle Fleet. Her base was changed from the west coast to Hawaii in the spring of 1940, and she was moored in Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked on 7 December 1941.

Blue spent the Pacific War's first weeks patrolling off Pearl Harbor. In January 1942, she was assigned to the task force built around the aircraft carrier Enterprise and participated in raids on Japanese island bases during the next month. Blue then escorted convoys between Hawaii and California until June 1942, when she sailed for New Zealand.

Upon arrival in mid-July, Blue joined the force preparing for the invasion of Guadalcanal and Tulagi, in the southern Solomon Islands. During the 7-8 August landings, she was employed in gunfire support and screening. The destroyer was on picket duty off the northern tip of Guadalcanal on 9 August 1942 when Japanese warships slipped by undetected and delivered a painful defeat to the U.S. and Australian navies in the Battle of Savo Island. Nearly two weeks later, on 22 August, Blue was on patrol off Guadalcanal when she was torpedoed by the Japanese destroyer Kawakaze. Her severely twisted stern prevented towing the damaged ship to nearby Tulagi. USS Blue was scuttled on 23 August 1942, as strong Japanese naval forces approached in the early stages of the Battle of the Eastern Solomons.