Returning to Norfolk on 24 November, Fitch joined in exercises in Casco and Chesapeake Bays, and performed coastal escort duty, sailing as far south as the Panama Canal Zone, through the remainder of 1942.

Operating out of Scapa Flow for the next two months, Fitch screened Ranger as her planes attacked German forces and installations near Bodø, Norway, on 4 October, and patrolled off Spitzbergen as the men of the weather station there were relieved and resupplied.

Fitch returned to Boston on 3 December 1943 to resume coastal and Caribbean escort duty and to take part in hunter-killer operations in the western Atlantic until 25 April 1944, when she got underway from Norfolk for Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Arriving off Utah Beach early in the morning of the invasion, Fitch followed the minesweepers through the newly swept channels to within 2,000 yards of the coast.

After two days screening the transport area, she returned to Plymouth for supplies, then continued to give fire support and to patrol off the beachheads until 19 June.

Until 25 October, she supported the buildup in southern France by escorting convoys moving between Naples, Palermo, Oran, Gibraltar, and Marseilles.

Arriving at Pearl Harbor on 10 February 1945, Fitch trained in minesweeping exercises there and at Ulithi, where her propellers were badly damaged when she ran afoul of a coral pinnacle.