USS Wilhoite (DE-397) was an Edsall-class destroyer escort built for the United States Navy during World War II. She served in the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean and provided destroyer escort protection against submarine and air attack for Navy vessels and convoys.

Thomas Mack Wilhoite was born on 12 February 1921 in Guthrie, Kentucky. He enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve on 16 June 1941 at Atlanta, Georgia, and received his aviation indoctrination training at the Naval Reserve Air Base, Atlanta, Georgia. On 7 August, he reported for flight instruction at the Naval Air Station Pensacola Florida, and was appointed an aviation cadet the following day. Transferred to NAS, Miami, Florida, on 15 January 1942 for further training, he became a naval aviator on 6 February. Three days later, he was commissioned an ensign and, at the end of February, reported to the Advanced Carrier Training Group, Atlantic Fleet, NAS, Norfolk, Virginia. There, he joined Fighting Squadron (VF) 9, then fitting out and, in time, became the assistant navigation officer for that squadron.

Operation Torch, the invasion of French North Africa, saw VF-9 assigned to the carrier USS Ranger. Each section of the squadron drew assigned tasks on 8 November 1942, the first day of the landings; and he flew one of five Grumman F4F Wildcats which attacked the French airdrome at Rabat-Sale, the headquarters of the French air forces in Morocco. Despite heavy antiaircraft fire, he pressed home a determined attack and set three French bombers afire with his guns. In a second strike directed at the Port Lyautey airdrome later that day, he flew as part of the third flight and destroyed one fighter, a Dewoitine 520 by strafing. However his Wildcat took hits from the intense fire and crashed about one mile from Port Lyautey. He was posthumously awarded the Silver Star.

She was laid down on 4 August 1943 at Houston, Texas, by the Brown Shipbuilding Co.; launched on 5 October 1943; sponsored by Mrs. Corinne M. Wilhoite, the mother of Ensign Wilhoite; and commissioned at Houston on 16 December 1943.

After her shakedown out of Great Sound, Bermuda, from 9 January to 10 February 1944, Wilhoite underwent post-shakedown availability at the Charleston Navy Yard from 11 to 21 February. She then got underway for Gibraltar with Convoy UGS (United States to Gibraltar) 34 on 23 February. On two occasions during the voyage, the destroyer escort depth charged presumed submarine contacts with inconclusive results. After turning the convoy over to British escort vessels once she had passed through the Strait of Gibraltar, Wilhoite returned to the United States with Convoy GUS (Gibraltar to the United States) 33 and arrived at New York City on 3 April.

After a 10-day availability at the New York Navy Yard, the destroyer escort operated briefly with submarines and PT boats and conducted antiaircraft firing practice in Block Island Sound, Brooklyn, New York, before shifting south to the Tidewater area to pick up Convoy UGS-40 in Hampton Roads late in April, led by the Campbell.

The transatlantic passage proved largely uneventful; but, as the Allied ships transited the Strait of Gibraltar, the British antiaircraft cruiser HMS Caledon, the destroyer Benson, and two minesweepers equipped with special jamming apparatus, Steady and Sustain, joined the convoy. A recent increase in German air activity had prompted concern over the safety of UGS-40, a large and important convoy consisting of some 80 vessels.

At 2106 on 11 May, Wilhoite's search radar picked up "bogeys" some 18 miles (29 km) northeast of UGS-40. Two minutes later, the screening ships commenced their barrage. Observers in Wilhoite saw the attacking planes, torpedo-carrying Junkers Ju 88s, sheer away from the flak, fly aft along the transport screen to the northward, and then cut across the stern of the convoy, circling. Soon, as the Ju 88s came around the stern of the convoy, Wilhoite, coordinating the defense of that sector, sent up several barrages with her 3-inch, 40- and 20-millimeter guns.