Conner carried the name of Commodore David Conner, who commanded the Home Squadron in the first part of the Mexican War. Boston Navy Yard launched her on 18 July 1942. She commissioned on 8 June 1943 under Lieutenant Commander W. E. Kaitner and reached Pearl Harbor on 19 September.
She was in the Wake raid of 5 and 6 October, the Gilberts, the Nauru bombardment, and the early 1944 carrier strikes through the Marshalls and Marianas. On 13 October 1944, off Formosa, a torpedo hit the heavy cruiser Canberra (CA-70). Conner stayed with the crippled ship as she was towed clear and shot down aircraft that came back to finish her. She screened the Leyte landings, covered Mindoro in December and Lingayen in January, then went to the West Coast for overhaul.
Back in the Philippines in May 1945, she fired in support of the Australian landings at Brunei Bay from 10 to 17 June and at Balikpapan from 1 to 9 July. On 2 August she and another destroyer stopped the Japanese ship Tachibana Maru, marked as a hospital ship. The boarding party found troops and contraband. They took her as a prize into Morotai on 6 August. After the surrender Conner did occupation duty from Jinsen in Korea to Tsingtao and Shanghai, reached San Francisco on 20 January 1946, and decommissioned at Long Beach on 5 July.
Greece borrowed her on 15 September 1959 as Aspis. She was sold outright in 1977, stricken in 1991, and scrapped in 1997. Twelve battle stars.