USS Kalk, a 1620-ton Benson class destroyer built at San Francisco, California, was commissioned in October 1942. She spent over two months shaking down off the U.S. West Coast and at year's end steamed to the Aleutians, where she conducted patrol missions until late February 1943. Transferred to the Atlantic in April, Kalk began several months of convoy escort service between the East Coast and North Africa.

Kalk returned to the Pacific in January 1944 by way of the Panama Canal. Assigned to the Seventh Fleet, she performed escort and patrol duties and supported amphibious operations in the Admiralty Islands and along the north shore of New Guinea. On 27 May 1944, while participating in the Biak invasion, a Japanese bomb hit Kalk amidships, causing severe damage to the ship and heavy casualties among her crew. She had to be towed to port for emergency repairs prior to going to the U.S. for shipyard work.

Her repairs were completed in October 1944, and Kalk was back in the Western Pacific by the end of November. Her primary assignment for the remainder of World War II was as an escort for the extensive force of logistics ships that kept the fighting fleet almost constantly in action against the enemy. While so employed, she supported the campaigns to seize the Philippines, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. At the end of the Pacific War, Kalk was present in Tokyo Bay to witness the 2 September 1945 Japanese surrender ceremonies. She voyaged back to the United States beginning in October, arriving in Boston, Massachusetts, in mid-December. The next month, the destroyer was sent to Charleston, South Carolina, where she was decommissioned in May 1946. USS Kalk remained in the Atlantic Reserve Fleet until stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in June 1968. She was sunk as a target in March 1969.

USS Kalk was named in honor of Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Stanton F. Kalk, USN, (1894-1917), who lost his life in the sinking of USS Jacob Jones in December 1917.