USS Strong, a 2050-ton Fletcher class destroyer, was built at Bath, Maine. Commissioned in August 1942, she escorted one convoy to Puerto Rico in October and another to North Africa in November before sailing for the Pacific near the end of the year. Upon her arrival in the south Pacific in late January 1943, Strong performed escort and patrol tasks during the last days of the Guadalcanal campaign and in the period leading up to the Allied offensive into the central Solomons. She also took part in a bombardment of Kolombangara in mid-March, helped to sink the enemy submarine RO-34 in early April, supported the mining of Blackett Strait in early May, shelled Kolombangara and New Georgia in mid-May and assisted in fighting off Japanese planes when they attacked shipping off Guadalcanal in mid-June.

In early July 1943, soon after the initial landings of the New Georgia campaign, Strong was part of a cruiser-destroyer task force sent to bombard the enemy while troops landed at Rice Anchorage, on New Georgia's western shore. In the early morning darkness of 5 July, as the force began to withdraw from the target area, a group of Japanese destroyers approaching on a transport mission detected the U.S. ships, fired their torpedoes at long range and retreated. Strong was the victim of their only hit. Broken nearly in two, she floated long enough for most of her survivors to be rescued by companion destroyers. However, 46 of her crewmen were lost with her.