Burden R. Hastings, DE-19, was an Evarts-class destroyer escort. She was built at Mare Island Navy Yard for Britain under Lend-Lease and launched as HMS Duckworth (BDE-19) on 20 November 1942. The United States took her over and reclassified her DE-19 on 25 January 1943, renamed her on 19 February 1943, and commissioned her on 1 May 1943, Lieutenant Commander Philip A. Walker, USNR, in command.
She worked out of Pearl Harbor and went to Baker Island in August 1943. From 12 November she carried out pre-invasion bombardment off Tarawa until the landings on 20 November. In 1944 she left Pearl Harbor on 28 January and supported the occupation of Kwajalein on 5 and 6 February, reaching Kwajalein with the Southern Garrison Group. She then took part in the raids on Palau, Yap, Ulithi and Woleai at the end of March.
On 16 June 1944, steaming alone from Majuro toward Pearl Harbor, her radar picked up a surfaced contact ten miles away at about 2:50 in the morning that gave no friendly identification. She closed, challenged it three times by lamp, got no reply, and fired star shells. The contact vanished from the radar, and she began a sonar search. Her second hedgehog attack was followed by four depth charges and a violent explosion that knocked out her gyro compass. At sunrise her crew found debris and an oil slick and picked up wreckage, including a spare-parts box with characters that identified the submarine as Ro-44. DANFS says postwar Japanese records bore out the sinking.
She spent the rest of the war as a convoy escort, plane guard and member of hunter-killer groups in the Marshalls, Gilberts and Western Carolines. On 12 January 1945, while she was at Ulithi, I-36 launched a kaiten attack on the anchorage and a torpedo damaged the ammunition ship Mazama. She was decommissioned at Terminal Island on 25 October 1945 and struck on 13 November 1945. She was delivered to her purchaser, the National Metal and Steel Corporation, on 1 February 1947. She earned four battle stars.