USS Chevalier, a 2050-ton Fletcher class destroyer, was built at Bath, Maine, and commissioned in July 1942. After shakedown, she escorted Atlantic convoys from October into December 1942, then steamed to the south Pacific, where she arrived in January 1943. Late in that month, while serving in the screen of a task force of cruisers, escort aircraft carriers and destroyers, she participated in the air-sea Battle of Rennell Island, one of the final actions of the long and bloody Guadalcanal Campaign.

In May 1943, as the Central Solomons Campaign began, Chevalier covered minelaying operations in Blackett Strait and Kula Gulf that cost the Japanese three destroyers. She also participated in gunfire bombardments of enemy positions on Kolombangara and New Georgia during May and July. Damaged on 5 July while helping to rescue the crew of the torpedoed USS Strong, she was under repair for much of the rest of that month. Chevalier next took part in landings on Vella Lavella during mid-August 1943, including an engagement on 18 August with Japanese destroyers and smaller craft.

Chevalier escorted a convoy to Australia in September, but was back in the Central Solomons by early October, as the Japanese were trying to evacuate their troops from Vella Lavella. On the night of 6-7 october, she was one of three U.S. destroyers that took on a force of six Japanese destroyers. When this Battle of Vella Lavella was over, Chevalier and her companion destroyer Selfridge had been hit by enemy torpedoes and one of the Japanese ships had been sunk. With her bow blown off as far aft as the bridge, and further damaged amidships by collision with her other companion, USS O'Bannon, Chevalier could not be saved. After her surviving crewmen had been removed, she was scuttled by a torpedo from USS La Vallette.