During the Battle of Midway on the morning of 4 June 1942, Waldron led 15 Douglas TBD Devastators, one piloted by Abercrombie, from the USS Hornet's flight deck.

VT-8 pressed home a desperate attack in the face of fighters and heavy antiaircraft fire, and all 15 planes were shot down.

The destroyer escort spent the first three weeks of May in the vicinity of Galveston, Texas either at sea in the Gulf of Mexico testing her ordnance and equipment or in port receiving finishing touches in preparation for shakedown training.

On 14 October, she returned to sea and joined the screen of an escort carrier task group on its way to provide close air support for the amphibious landings at Leyte in the Philippine Islands.

After rendezvousing with a large convoy of amphibious ships and merchantmen off Hollandia on the northern coast of New Guinea, Abercrombie's group set course for the Philippines.

Leaving the reinforcement convoy in Leyte Gulf, Abercrombie escorted the small carriers to their operating area east of the Philippines.

After amphibious landing exercises at Cape Torokina on Bougainville and at Huon Gulf, New Guinea, she returned to Manus to make final preparations for the invasion of Luzon.

Though enemy aircraft sank several American warships and damaged a number of others, the combat air patrol (CAP) provided a fairly effective umbrella, and only a small percentage of the raiders succeeded in penetrating the aerial shield.

During the final pre-invasion bombardment, Abercrombie's guns opened fire on the enemy for the first time when a kamikaze dived on USS Columbia.

By 1100, the general lack of resistance on the beaches allowed the transports and cargo ships to move inshore to complete disembarking troops and unloading supplies and equipment.

That development freed Abercrombie of control ship duties, and she steamed out to join the antiaircraft screen for empty transports awaiting the formation of convoys for the return voyage to rear area bases.

That unit's assignment was to secure Kerama Retto, a group of small islands located to the west of the southern half of Okinawa, before the main assault for use as a fleet anchorage, replenishment area, and temporary repair facility.

Arriving back in the Ryūkyūs on 17 April, the destroyer escort spent the next two months performing a variety of services in support of the campaign to wrest Okinawa from the Japanese.

Ships such as Abercrombie patrolling the radar picket stations surrounding Okinawa provided early warnings of incoming air raids and bore the brunt of those onslaughts.

When not standing watch on a radar picket station, Abercrombie conducted antisubmarine searches, rescued downed American airmen, and provided escort services to a variety of ships.

She arrived at Saipan four days later and remained there, undergoing routine maintenance while her crew enjoyed some respite from the rigors of duty at Okinawa, until the end of the month.

Abercrombie entered Wakanoura Wan, Honshū, on 24 September, and began six weeks of duty in support of the forces occupying Japan.

Berthed with the San Diego Group, Pacific Reserve Fleet, the destroyer escort remained inactive there until sometime in the mid-1950s when she was moved to Bremerton, Washington.