"Dale" was launched 23 January 1935 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard; sponsored by Mrs. E. C. Dale; and commissioned 17 June 1935, Commander W. A. Corn in command. Rear Admiral Yates Stirling, Jr., commandant of the Third Naval District and the Brooklyn Navy Yard, oversaw construction and presided over the commissioning. As a fourteen-year-old boy nearly 50 years earlier, Stirling had lived aboard the first USS Dale (1839) when the old sloop-of-war, her masts removed and at the end of her long service, was the station ship at the Washington Navy Yard under his father's command. "Dale" was decommissioned 16 October 1945 and sold 20 December 1946.