USS Clark, a 1805-ton Porter class destroyer built at Quincy, Massachusetts, was commissioned in May 1936. During the later 1930s and early 1940s she served in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Pacific, often in her designed role as flagship of a squadron or division of smaller destroyers. Clark steamed across the Pacific to Australia in March and April 1941, one of a number of U.S. warship cruises made in that year as the prospects of violent conflict with Japan became ever-stronger. After the war's abrupt arrival in December 1941, she escorted convoys between the U.S. west coast, Hawaii and the south Pacific. Clark also screened aircraft carriers when they delivered air strikes on New Guinea in March 1942 and guarded French Frigate Shoals during the early June Battle of Midway.

Clark returned to the south Pacific in the summer of 1942, mainly protecting shipping during the Guadalcanal Campaign. She was one of the aircraft carrier Enterprise's escorts during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in mid-November. The following month Clark moved to the Panama Canal Zone area to serve as the Southeast Pacific Force flagship, operating along the South American coast until August 1944.

After an overhaul, Clark began new duties escorting convoys across the Atlantic, making six round-trip voyages between September 1944 and April 1945. In October 1945, with World War II finally at an end, she was decommissioned at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. USS Clark was scrapped in 1946.