On 13 March 1964, "Turner Joy" departed Long Beach to embark upon her most celebrated tour of duty in the Far East. The third western Pacific deployment of her career began routinely enough. After calling at Pearl Harbor on her way west, the destroyer joined a task group built around for operations in the Philippine Sea, followed by a cruise through the South China Sea to Japan. Further training operations and port visits ensued, as the deployment continued peacefully. During late July 1964, "Turner Joy", while attached to a carrier task group built around , began making "watch dog" patrols off the coast of Vietnam where a guerrilla war had been raging at varying levels of intensity since the end of World War II.