The 18 Forrest Sherman-class destroyers comprised the first post-war class of US destroyers. Commissioned beginning in 1955, these ships served until the late 1980s. Their weaponry underwent considerable modification during their years of service. Four were converted to guided-missile destroyers. This class also served as the basis for the Charles F. Adams-class guided-missile destroyers.

In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, maneuverable, long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy, or carrier battle group and defend them against a wide range of general threats. They were originally conceived in 1885 by Fernando Villaamil for the Spanish Navy as a defense against torpedo boats, and by the time of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, these "torpedo boat destroyers" (TBDs) were "large, swift, and powerfully armed torpedo boats designed to destroy other torpedo boats". Although the term "destroyer" had been used interchangeably with "TBD" and "torpedo boat destroyer" by navies since 1892, the term "torpedo boat destroyer" had been generally shortened to simply "destroyer" by nearly all navies by the First World War.