After transiting the Panama Canal and stopping at Tutuila in the Samoan Islands, the destroyer reported at Noumea, New Caledonia, on 20 January 1943 for duty in the South West Pacific Area.

[1] On 27 January, Taylor cleared Havannah Harbor with the other ships of TF 18, one of several task forces sent out to screen an important reinforcement echelon to Guadalcanal.

When the destroyer was just about to enter Tulagi, a strong Japanese air raid cancelled her mission by severely bombing Kanawha before the old oiler could clear the harbor completely.

During her next assignment—escorting a convoy of troop transports to Guadalcanal and back—she defended her charges against Japanese planes which jumped the task unit on 10 June south of San Cristobal.

After repairs at Espiritu Santo, she served with the antisubmarine screen of escort carrier Sangamon (ACV-26) until 6 July when she headed for Tulagi to report for duty with TF 31.

She headed up the "Slot" with Ainsworth's cruisers—the same ones with which she had previously served except that HMNZS Leander replaced Helena after the latter cruiser was lost in the Battle of Kula Gulf—to intercept a Japanese surface force.

There is no way of knowing for sure, but the accumulated effect of the destroyer's torpedoes and the entire task force's gunfire cost the enemy his flagship and his commander, Rear Admiral Shunji Izaki.

On 11 August, Nicholas, O'Bannon (DD-450), Chevalier (DD-451), and Taylor were ordered to return to Guadalcanal and rejoin TF 31 for the Vella Lavella phase of the central Solomons operation.

During the ensuing action off Horaniu, a mad melee of torpedoes and gunfire, neither side lost a destroyer; but the Japanese suffered some damage when American shells set Hamakaze ablaze.

While south of New Georgia escorting a convoy, Taylor, Ralph Talbot, and La Valette (DD-448) were ordered to join O'Bannon, Chevalier, and Selfridge already embroiled in a slugfest with nine Japanese destroyers covering the Vella Lavella evacuation group.

During the actual landings and occupations, she protected her charges from enemy aircraft and submarines while their planes took off to help those of the escort carriers maintain air supremacy over the islands.

Near the end of those forays, she teamed up with La Vallette and USS San Francisco (CA-38) to splash two of four enemy Nakajima B5N "Kates" which attacked the task group just after noon on 4 December.

After 12 days of training operations and repairs, the destroyer departed Pearl Harbor in the screen of Sangamon (CVE-26), Suwannee (CVE-27), Chenango (CVE-28), and Santee (CVE-29), and arrived in Purvis Bay near Guadalcanal on the 27th.

Again, she joined her sister ships in beating off heavy enemy air raids, climaxed by a large attack of kamikaze suicide planes and dive bombers on the 29th.

During the Allied approach to Lingayen Gulf and in the days following the landings, the Japanese subjected Taylor and her sister ships to a series of heavy air raids.

Between 13 and 18 February, she participated in an extensive bombardment of Corregidor and of the Mariveles Bay area of Luzon to support minesweeping operations and to pave the way for an assault by airborne troops.

On 26 March, the ship participated in the amphibious assault on Cebu Island, where she joined Boise (CL-47), Phoenix (CL-46), Fletcher (DD-445), Nicholas, Jenkins (DD-447), and Abbot (DD-629) in laying down a heavy pre-landing bombardment.

[1] After a short two-day sightseeing visit to Manila, Taylor cleared the Philippines with Boise, Phoenix, two Australian warships, and four other American destroyers to support the amphibious landings in northeastern Borneo.

On 27 April, Taylor and her sister ships reached the vicinity of the invasion—Tarakan, a small island located just off the eastern coast of Borneo and north of Makassar Strait.

On 25 June, she returned to Leyte Gulf and remained there until 8 July, when she departed in the screen of TG 30.8, the logistics group for the fast carriers of TF 38.

Admiral William Halsey, commander of the 3rd Fleet ordered that the destroyers from DesRon 21 be present in Tokyo Bay for Japan's surrender "because of their valorous fight up the long road from the South Pacific to the very end."

[1] After four years of inactivity, Taylor moved to the San Francisco Naval Shipyard on 9 May 1950 and, three days later, began an extensive conversion to an escort destroyer.

Her blockade duty at Wonsan was far from passive for, on numerous occasions, she was called upon to shell enemy shore batteries and lines of transportation and to screen minesweepers during daily sweeps of the harbor.

Late that month, Taylor headed south for a tour of duty on the Taiwan Strait Patrol during which she made a weekend port call at Hong Kong.

She reached Yokosuka on 12 May and, after visiting that port and Sasebo, put to sea to join a carrier task group built around USS Bairoko (CVE-115) and HMS Ocean (R68) off the western coast of Korea.

For the most part, she screened the carriers during air operations; however, on two occasions, she patrolled close to the enemy-held shoreline to discourage the North Koreans from attempting to take offshore islands held by United Nations forces.

Her subsequent deployments, while they included both duty off Korea and on the Taiwan Strait Patrol, were entirely peaceful in nature until the expansion of the American role in the Vietnamese civil war in 1965.

In lieu of her annual western Pacific deployment, Taylor spent the spring and summer of 1962 in the mid-Pacific as one of the support units for Operation Dominic, nuclear tests conducted in the upper atmosphere.

During this deployment to the Far East, Taylor called at Kobe, Japan; Hong Kong; Okinawa; and Kushiro as well as the base ports of Yokosuka, Sasebo, and Subic Bay.

She cleared the coast of Indochina on the 12th, and, after a five-day stop at Hong Kong and another tour of duty in the Gulf of Tonkin, she returned to Yokosuka on 11 October.