1943
Wadsworth departed Boston on 5 April and conducted exercises in Casco Bay, Maine, until the 15th, when she sailed for Cuban waters. After shakedown training out of Guantanamo Bay, the new destroyer steamed north for post-shakedown availability and voyage repairs in the Boston Navy Yard.
Putting to sea on 23 May, Wadsworth screened the aircraft carriers Princeton and Yorktown out of Port of Spain, Trinidad, as they conducted training evolutions. Following that cruise, Wadsworth touched at Norfolk, Virginia, on 17 June and returned to Boston the following day.
After escorting Bunker Hill to Hampton Roads, Virginia, Wadsworth screened Cowpens and planeguarded for that carrier as her air group trained off the Virginia Capes. Following a return to Boston, the destroyer got underway again on 20 July to rendezvous with a task group formed around Lexington, Princeton, and Belleau Wood. She met the carriers off the Delaware breakwater, and the warships then set a southerly course, bound for the Panama Canal.
Reaching Pearl Harbor on 9 August, Wadsworth spent 10 days in the Hawaiian operating area before heading for Canton Island in the screen for Prince William. Subsequently touching Espiritu Santo, in the New Hebrides Islands, Wadsworth reported to Rear Admiral Aubrey W. Fitch, Commander, Aircraft, South Pacific (ComAirSoPac), for duty.
On the last day of August 1943, Wadsworth cleared Espiritu Santo to hunt for the Japanese submarine—later identified as Japanese submarine I-20—that had torpedoed and damaged the tanker W. S. Rheem about 10 miles (20 km) north of Bougainville Strait. Wadsworth made no contact with any submarines in the first area searched but then teamed with amphibious patrol planes to scour the seas to the south of Espiritu Santo and west of Nalekula Island.
Her diligence was soon rewarded. On 1 September, Wadsworth picked up an underwater sound contact and dropped seven patterns of depth charges and claimed unconfirmed damage to the submersible. I-20 may have survived that onslaught but never returned home. Records list her as "missing" as of 10 October 1943.
Putting into Havannah Harbor, Efate Island, on 6 September, Wadsworth then exercised with a task force formed around Saratoga. The destroyer subsequently cleared that port on the 17th in company with Tracy and, over the ensuing days, escorted a convoy of supply ships to Kukum beach, Guadalcanal.
Returning to Efate with empty cargo ships on 30 September, Wadsworth took a screening station near South Dakota to escort that battlewagon to the west for a rendezvous with a cruiser-battleship striking force under the command of Rear Admiral Willis A. Lee. Wadsworth then patrolled off Meli Bay, Efate, to cover the entrance of convoys into Havannah Harbor.
Wadsworth subsequently joined other units of Destroyer Division 45 (DesDiv 45) as part of the protective screen for a dozen troop transports, Task Group 31.5 (TG 31.5), bound for the Solomons and the initial landings of men in Empress Augusta Bay, Cape Torokina, Bougainville. The expeditionary force arrived off the beach at Cape Torokina in the early morning darkness on 1 November. Then Wadsworth led in the initial force, a group of minesweepers, into Empress Augusta Bay.
At 05:47, Wadsworth's 5 inch guns began to bark, and her shells destroyed enemy barges along the shoreline. For nearly two hours, the warship blasted targets behind the beaches, before she and sister ship Sigourney took a patrol station to protect the transports which were landing troops. Suddenly, six enemy planes plunged out of the sun at the two destroyers, and the first of six bombs exploded only 25 yards to starboard of Wadsworth. Two other bombs burst within 500 yards of her beam, one to starboard and one to port. Then, a near-miss 20 feet from her port side sprayed the after section of the ship with fragments that killed two Wadsworth sailors and wounded nine others. On the other hand, the two destroyers each bagged two of the attackers.
Standing out of the unloading area on the night of 1 November, Wadsworth patrolled off Koli Point, Guadalcanal. Early in the morning a week later, the destroyer returned to Bougainville, escorting the second echelon of troop transports to Empress Augusta Bay. On this occasion, Wadsworth took a fighter-director station off the transport area and assisted in repelling a noon enemy air attack, her guns claiming one dive bomber and one torpedo plane.
Clearing Cape Torokina shortly before midnight, Wadsworth patrolled off Guadalcanal until the 10th, when she moved to Purvis Bay, Florida Island. However, she soon returned to Bougainville's coastal waters, escorting a troop convoy. The destroyer arrived off Cape Torokina near midnight on the 12th and, before dawn, had repelled two torpedo attacks with her radar-controlled 5 inch gunnery.
Wadsworth operated in support of the Bougainville occupation through the end of 1944, escorting troop-and supply-laden convoys from Kukum beach, Guadalcanal, to Empress Augusta Bay. From time to time, she also carried out shore bombardment missions. Three days after Christmas 1943, she blasted Japanese trenches and gun emplacements on both the south and north sides of the mouth of the Reini River, aided by air spot.
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