Launched on 27 October 1943, the SMALLEY (DD-565) was commissioned at Seattle, Washington, on 31 March 1944. Underway on 7 June, she escorted three troop transports to Hawaii. From there, she escorted the INTREPID (CV-11) to Eniwetok in the Marshalls and back to Pearl. On the return trip, the carrier was loaded with wounded marines from the landings on Saipan. On 3 August, with DesRon 57, the SMALLEY sailed for the Aleutians where the principal enemy was the weather. Rough seas, high winds, rain, sleet, and ice regularly curtailed  operations. On 21 November 1944, she and the other destroyers in her squadron attacked Matsuwa Island, the first of four successful sweeps against enemy installations in the Kurile Islands. During the attack on Matsuwa, the SMALLEY fired 466 rounds in the bombardment of buildings, tents, machine gun emplacements, and an air strip . She made three more bombardment missions during her Aleutian tour and then, on 18 April 1945 was ordered back to Hawaii.

On 11 May she joined the ROWE (DD-564) and STODDARD (DD-566) in screening the carrier TICONDEROGA (CV-14) to Ulithi. En route, planes from the TICONDEROGA struck Taroa Island. During this raid, the SMALLEY rescued a crewman from a downed torpedo plane.

On 4 June 1945, the SMALLEY arrived off Okinawa to support the Allied struggle for the bitterly contested island. From 5 to 17 June, she provided antiaircraft support for the radar picket destroyers, which came under night attack on three occasions. She also patrolled for submarines, provided air defense of the transport area, screened a reconnaissance mission to Kume Shima, and rescued survivors from the WILLIAM D. PORTER (DD-579), which was sunk on picket station.

After the Okinawa Campaign and a rest in Leyte, the SMALLEY was assigned to the fast carrier task force of Admiral Halsey’s Third Fleet and participated in the repeated attacks against the Japanese home islands of Honshu and Hokkaido from 1 July to the end of the war. While on duty with DesDiv 113, she participated in an anti-shipping sweep around Ogasawara Gunto and a bombardment of shore installations on Chichi Jima on 23 July 1945. Operating with Task Force 38 she controlled standby Combat Air Patrols and, among other things, supplied emergency rations and medical supplies to repatriated POWs. She served with the Fifth Fleet and Eastern Japan Force for the final stages of the occupation and was back home at year’s end. In January 1947 she was decommissioned and placed in reserve at the Charleston Naval Shipyard.

The SMALLEY was brought back to active duty on 3 July 1951 with the outbreak of the Korean War. Newport, Rhode Island, became her new home port and base of operations until 19 May 1953 when she sailed for Korea. On 2 July, the SMALLEY entered the Korean combat zone as plane guard for the PRINCETON (CVA-37). She continued to operate with the carriers of Task Force 77 as they carried out the famous “Cherokee” strikes until the armistice on 27 July 1953. In early September 1953 the SMALLEY got underway with the POINT CRUZ (CVE-119) bound for Inchon and Operation Kite. The five-day operation involved transporting 5,000 Indian troops from the flight deck of the POINT CRUZ by helicopter to the demilitarized zone ashore. With the completion of Operation Kite, the SMALLEY rejoined Task Force 77 in the East China Sea, where on 18 September her crew rescued two occupants of a downed helicopter from the carrier YORKTOWN (CVA-10). Remaining in the area until early November, she performed such diverse tasks as ferrying 110 Marines from Sasebo, Japan, to Pusan, Korea, and assisting a South Korean fishing vessel in distress, taking aboard the boat’s twenty-nine-man crew who had been adrift without food or water for ten days. She returned to Newport in January 1954.