USS Taussig, a 2200-ton Allen M. Sumner class destroyer built at Staten Island, New York, was commissioned in May 1944. Following shakedown and training in the western Atlantic and Caribbean, she transited the Panama Canal in September and, after more training, arrived in the Pacific war zone in October 1944. Operating with the fast aircraft carriers during the rest of the year, she participated in combat operations in the Philippines area and the South China Sea. Her carrier screening duties continued in 1945, during which she helped cover the invasions of Luzon, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and a series of raids against the Japanese Home Islands. In March she used her guns to bombard Okino Daito Shima and, during the following months off Okinawa, these weapons were regularly employed against Japanese aircraft.

With the Pacific War over, Taussig returned to the United States in October 1945, but steamed back across the Pacific in February 1946 to begin the first of sixteen Far Eastern deployments over the next twenty-three years. That cruise, which ended in March 1947, was followed by training ship service off the West Coast. The destroyer's next session in the western Pacific began in May 1950, lasted until early 1951, and included active participation in the Korean War, which began in late June. Taussig made two more combat cruises off Korea, one in August 1951 - May 1952 and the second from November 1952 until July 1953. Eight more tours in Asian waters followed during the next ten years, punctuated by service in the eastern Pacific and, in 1962, by a major "FRAM II" modernization that greatly changed her appearance.

Taussig's involvement in her third armed conflict began during her thirteenth post-World War II Far Eastern cruise, which ran from October 1964 to May 1965, when she briefly supported Vietnam War aircraft carrier operations. Her following three deployments, in April-November 1966, January-June 1968 and June-October 1969, included active service off Vietnam providing naval gunfire support for forces ashore, screening carriers and covering amphibious operations. In 1970, while preparing for another "WestPac" tour, Taussig fell victim to the then-ongoing effort to reduce the size of the active fleet. She was decommissioned at the beginning of December 1970 and placed in the Pacific Reserve Fleet. Stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in September 1973, Taussig was sold to the Republic of China in May 1974. Renamed Lo Yang, she served in the Taiwanese Navy until the beginning of the Twenty-First Century.

USS Taussig was named in honor of Rear Admiral Edward D. Taussig (1847-1921), whose long career began during the Civil War and extended through the First World War.