Originally to be designated as DD-955, the ship was laid down as DDG-5 by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation at Camden, New Jersey on 18 May 1959, launched on 4 June 1960 and commissioned as USS Biddle on 5 May 1962, at Philadelphia Naval Shipyard.

[1] From June 1964 to end of 1965 Claude V. Ricketts was part of a mixed-manning experiment for a proposed Multilateral Force (MLF).

Though the MLF never was created, Secretary of the Navy Paul Nitze stated that the project on Claude V. Ricketts was successful.

[2] According to Secretary of the Navy Paul Nitze, Admiral Claude V. Ricketts had made great contributions to the concept of mixed manning and a Multilateral Force.

Because of this, he thought it appropriate to rename USS Biddle in Ricketts' honor while the ship was conducting a mixed-manning experiment on 28 July 1964.

During the first part of the cruise, the ship made ports of call to Djibouti, Kenya, and Karachi, Pakistan [1] On 4 November 1979, Claude V. Ricketts was making a port visit to Karachi, Pakistan[citation needed] when radical students invaded and occupied the US Embassy in Tehran, Iran and took the embassy staff hostage initiating the Iran hostage crisis.

[2] Claude V. Ricketts deployed to Northern Europe in January 1981 and operated with the Standing Naval Force Atlantic.

The ship visited 8 countries and 15 different cities and conducted exercises from Gibraltar to Norway, north of the Arctic Circle and west to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

[2] During late 1983 and early 1984, Claude V. Ricketts deployed in support of operations of the coast of Lebanon in the months after the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing.

[6] Claude V. Ricketts was decommissioned on 31 October 1989 at Norfolk Naval Station, Norfolk, VA, stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 1 June 1990 and sold for scrap on 15 April 1994, to NR Acquisitions of NYC and towed to Bethlehem Steel's old Fairfield yard in Baltimore, MD for scrapping by Wilmington Resources, Inc. of Wilmington, NC.