USS Laffey, a 1620-ton Benson class destroyer, was built at San Francisco, California, and commissioned at the end of March 1942. Following training operations off the west coast, she was sent to the south Pacific to take part in the Guadalcanal campaign, arriving in late August. On 15 September 1942, after the aircraft carrier Wasp was sunk by a Japanese submarine, Laffey rescued many of her survivors.

Operating with U.S. cruisers and destroyers, Laffey took part in two night gun and torpedo battles near Guadalcanal. In the first, the Battle of Cape Esperance on 11-12 October 1942, she helped repulse a Japanese bombardment group. A month later, on the night of 12-13 November, she participated in the first surface action of the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. As part of the van group of the U.S. battle line, she engaged the Japanese battleships Hiei and Kirishima, then was torpedoed in the stern by the destroyer Teruzuki. USS Laffey was sunk shortly thereafter, when her after ammunition magazines exploded.

USS Laffey's wreck was discovered and examined in mid-1992, nearly a half-mile below the surface of Iron Bottom Sound, off Guadalcanal. She is upright and largely intact from the bow to amidships, but her after third has disappeared. Both forward 5-inch guns are trained out to port, and her midships superstructure bears a hole where a Japanese 14-inch battleship projectile passed through her in the darkness of 13 November 1942.