After shifting down the west coast from Seattle to San Francisco, she sailed from the latter port on 27 March for Korean waters, with 2,966 Army troops embarked.

Clearing Buckner Bay for the Philippines on 16 April, the ship disembarked 26 people at Manila, and embarked 4,106 others for passage to the west coast of the United States.

Departing New York on 20 June 1953, General William O. Darby proceeded to Yokosuka, Japan, via the Panama Canal, arriving at the Japanese port on 17 July to embark Korean War veterans.

Returning to Seattle on 29 July, the transport made five more round-trip voyages between the west coast of the United States and Japan in the next five months.

After returning to San Francisco on 23 January 1954, she sailed for the east coast on the 25th to resume operations with MSTS (Atlantic), and reached New York on 8 February.

In this period the ship took part in the mass movement of 50,000 troops to Cherbourg and Bremerhaven in the Berlin crisis in the autumn of 1961, the biggest troop-lift for MSTS since the s:Korean Armistice Agreement in 1953.

In February 1963, General William O. Darby brought back from Bremerhaven two paintings loaned temporarily to the United States from the French Louvre, Whistler's Mother and La Madeleine.

With the buildup of American strength in South Vietnam in 1965, all six MSTS (Atlantic) transports, including General William O. Darby, were withdrawn from the New York-to-Bremerhaven run and assigned to duty in the Pacific.

IX-510 was returned to the James River reserve fleet in April 1991, stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in October 1993, and transferred to full Maritime Administration ownership in May 1999.