Following a two-year tour at the Naval Air Station Anacostia, Blessman – promoted to lieutenant in January 1939 – joined USS Marblehead, then with the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, on 10 December 1939.

On 4 February 1942, Marblehead stood out of Surabaya, Java, as part of a mixed American-Dutch cruiser-destroyer force under Rear Admiral Karel W. F. M. Doorman, Royal Netherlands Navy.

The first of the two bombs to hit the ship penetrated the main deck and exploded near “wardroom country", the blast ripping through the light sheet metal bulkheads that comprised the boundaries of the compartment.

After commissioning, Blessman escorted convoys in the North Atlantic before taking part in Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Northern France in June 1944.

Clearing the Irish Sea on 8 December, Blessman escorted a westward-bound convoy on the return leg of her maiden voyage and arrived at New York five days before Christmas of 1943.

Instead of returning in the screen of a westbound convoy, however, she shifted to Belfast on the 27th in company with her sister ships and division mates Rich, Bates, and Amesbury, and became part of the armada forming for the assault on Normandy.

Blessman departed Belfast on 3 June and headed for Baie de la Seine, France, escorting the bombardment group of the assault force.

Then, as "Operation Overlord" actually unfolded, Blessman switched to screening to seaward of the invasion force to deal with possible E-boat attacks.

Blessman gingerly came alongside the doomed, drifting, ship and removed six officers and 38 enlisted men before being ordered away because of the imminent danger of the transport's foundering.

Detached from "Overlord" on 12 June, after rounding out her duty screening the invasion force from air attacks and E-boat raids, Blessman reached New York on the 21st.

At Pearl Harbor, Blessman embarked Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) 15 and resumed her voyage westward on 11 December.

All LCPLs were on board by 1650, and Blessman then headed to a rendezvous with Humphreys to transfer UDT-15's commanding officer to that ship with the results of the day's covering the night retirement of TG 77.2.reconnaissance.

Over the next two days, Blessman served as courier and delivered mail among the ships of TG 77.2, each night taking a station to seaward in the screen of the task force.

"It finally dove", wrote Blessman's commanding officer, "after circling high above as though trying to make up its mind who to hit", and crashed close aboard a destroyer on the picket line 1,800 yards (1,600 m) to the east.

A heavy surf prevented the recovery of four of UDT-15's men who finally found temporary shelter on board LST-627 and LSM-11 and who Humphreys later returned to their own ship.

Hanlon had returned from Wasatch, and Blessman had recovered all of her LCPLs, the fast transport departed the area at flank speed and joined the designated task unit for the passage to Leyte, reporting "on station" at 2015.

After escorting transports back to Ulithi, the warship rested, reprovisioned, and trained for her next operation that would take her one step nearer to Japan.

Blessman reported for duty at Ulithi, and in company with other high-speed transports of TG 52.4, on 3 and 6 February 1945, conducted rehearsals for her forthcoming operation - the invasion of Iwo Jima.

[7] On the 16th, after the Fire Support Units 1 and 4 had commenced the pre-landing bombardment of Iwo Jima, Blessman was detached from the screen and conducted a close reconnaissance of the beaches while circling the island counter-clockwise.

After screening the heavy ships that evening, Blessman rendezvoused with Gilmer south of "Hot Rocks," the code name for Iwo Jima, shortly after 0941 on the 17th.

That afternoon, Blessman carried out another beach reconnaissance, recovered all of her boats safely by 1751, and stood out to the command ship Estes.

While she was en route, however, an enemy bomber, identified as a "Betty", came in at 2121, very low over the port quarter, strafing, and scored a direct bomb hit in the high-speed transport's starboard mess hall, above her number one engine room.

Fire broke out immediately in the mess hall, galley, and troop quarters on the main deck; and the ship lost all power.

Her historian recorded that, on the voyage to Saipan Blessman's men "...lived more like soldiers than sailors," cooking their meals in a makeshift fireplace on the fantail.

Made seaworthy enough for the trans-Pacific voyage, Blessman arrived at the Mare Island Navy Yard on 23 April 1945 for permanent repairs.

After stops at Pearl Harbor, Eniwetok, Ulithi, Manila, Subic Bay, and Okinawa, the fast transport entered Wakanoura Wan, where UDT 17 charted the landing beaches soon to be used by the Army's I Corps to occupy the Kobe-Osaka area.

[6] Renamed ROCS Chung Shan with the pennant number PF 43, the ship was rated as a frigate rather than an amphibious transport by the Republic of China Navy.

[12] In the early 1990s, Chung Shan, along with other surviving ex-destroyer escorts in Taiwanese service, was transferred to fisheries protection duties, and was disarmed, with only two 40 mm Bofors guns remaining.