USS Hawkins, a 2425-ton Gearing class destroyer, was built at Orange, Texas. She was commissioned in February 1945 and converted to a radar picket ship before steaming to the Pacific in June to begin combat operations. However, Japan agreed to surrender before she reached the war zone, so she spent the remainder of the year, and the first few months of 1946, in peacetime service in the western and central Pacific. Hawkins deployed to the Far East for a second time in January-October 1947 and made another "WestPac" cruise in 1948-1949, returning to San Diego, California, by way of the Indian Ocean, Suez Canal, Mediterranean and Panama Canal. She was redesignated DDR-873 in mid-March 1949, just after that homecoming, and shortly afterwards was transferred to the Atlantic Fleet.

Hawkins made her first regular deployment to the Mediterranean Sea in mid-1950, but was sent to the Pacific early in 1951 for a Korean War tour of duty that ended with her return to the East Coast in August. Thereafter, with two exceptions, she served in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, making a total of sixteen cruises with the Sixth Fleet in the "Middle Sea". Hawkins was present there during the 1956 Middle Eastern crisis. In 1961-63 the destroyer supported space flight operations, took part in the Cuban Missile crisis, and helped with tests of submarine-launched "Polaris" ballistic missiles.

Extensively modernized in 1964, Hawkins was redesignated DD-873 and emerged in FRAM I configuration, with a new superstructure, antisubmarine rocket (ASROC) launcher and facilities for operating for drone helicopters. In September 1965 she went back to the western Pacific for her fifth, and last, career cruise in those waters, returning to the Atlantic Coast in April 1966. Two Sixth Fleet deployments followed in 1966-67 and 1968. In 1969 and 1971 Hawkins supported Apollo space missions and, in 1970, she operated with the Standing Naval Force Atlantic in Northern European waters. Three more Mediterranean cruises, in 1972-73, 1975-76 and 1977 were punctuated in 1974 by long voyages around the Cape of Good Hope for operations in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf.

In December 1977 Hawkins was assigned to Naval Reserve training service out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. That lasted until the beginning of October 1979, when she was placed out of commission, stricken from the Naval Vessel Register and laid up at Philadelpha. Sold to Taiwan in March 1983 and renamed Tsu Yang, she served in Taiwan's navy until 1998.