The destroyer underwent a restricted availability at Yokosuka between mid-October and mid-December. On 12 December, she departed Japan bound for Kaohsiung, Taiwan, where she joined a convoy heading to Vietnam. She departed Kaohsiung on 16 December and relieved the destroyer in the northern "Sea Dragon" area on 19 December 1967. That duty continued for almost a month until 16 January 1968, when she moved close to the shores of the First and Second Corps Zones of South Vietnam to provide naval gunfire support for the 5th Marines until early February. After another two-week in-port period at Yokosuka, "Theodore E. Chandler" resumed search and rescue duty on the north SAR station in the Gulf of Tonkin followed by five days of shore bombardment in the First Corps Zone once again from 11 to 16 March. After that assignment, she made a leisurely voyage; first to Subic Bay, thence to Taiwan, and finally to Yokosuka where she remained through the third week in April.