USS Hull, a 1395-ton Farragut class destroyer built by the New York Navy Yard, was commissioned in January 1935. She made a shakedown cruise to the western coast of Europe in mid-year and transited the Panama Canal to take station in the Pacific in October. From then until 1939, Hull participated in U.S. Fleet exercises and training operations, steaming north to Alaska and west to Hawaii on occasion. Her base was shifted to Pearl Harbor in October 1939. She was moored there during the 7 December 1941 Japanese attack that opened the Pacific War.

During the war's first months Hull escorted the aircraft carrier Lexington in the South Pacific and carried out convoy escort missions between the U.S. West Coast and Hawaii. In August 1942 she took part in the invasion of Guadalcanal and Tulagi and was involved in the emerging Guadalcanal Campaign over the next two months. Hull served as a battleship escort in the South Pacific in late 1942 and early 1943. In April 1943 she went to the North Pacific, where she participated in the Kiska landings in August. The destroyer then returned to the much warmer Central Pacific to take part in raids on Japanese-held islands and, during November 1943, in the Gilberts Campaign.

Hull's next combat operation was the invasion of the Marshall Islands in late January and February 1944. Over the next several months she was a participant in raids on enemy bases in the Marshalls and Carolines, the Saipan and Guam invasions and the Battle of the Philippine Sea. A West Coast shipyard overhaul occupied her during August-October 1944. She then steamed across the Pacific, joining the Third Fleet's underway logistics forces in November. When her fueling group encountered a typhoon off the Philippines on 18 December 1944, Hull was overwhelmed by the violent winds and seas, capsized and sank. The tragedy took the lives of more than two hundred men, about three-quarters of her crew.

USS Hull was named in honor of Commodore Isaac Hull (1773-1843), a signficant Naval commander during and after the War of 1812.