After steaming to Norfolk, Virginia, on 25 October, Caliente spent the next month practiced refueling operations in the Chesapeake Bay, including one high-speed simulation with Bunch, and conducted standard training exercises.

After filling her tanks from SS Guadalupe at Seeadler Harbor, Admiralty Islands, the oiler supplied the returning carrier forces with avgas and fuel oil.

For the remainder of the month, as part of Operation Forager, she carried logistical supplies, mostly diesel and black oil, from Enewetak to ships off Saipan.

Caliente even made a run to Pearl Harbor, arriving 12 August, to assist the civilian tankers in the unending task of transporting oil and avgas to the fuel-guzzling carriers off the Marianas.

Ulithi, a regulating station of the Logistics Division, Pacific Fleet, had been deemed safe from enemy interference yet close enough to serve as a transshipment point for the forward operating areas.

At 0547 hours the oiler Mississinewa, a sister ship of Caliente, was hit by a kaiten, a Japanese manned torpedo, and burst into flames.

For the remainder of the year Caliente refueled task forces operating off the Philippines, easily weathering a tropical cyclone on 18 December, and even entered Leyte Gulf to fuel New Jersey and Lexington on 17 January 1945.

In February she departed Ulithi atoll, remembered only for "movies on the cargo deck and beer parties at Mogmog island", for the long voyage to San Francisco, California.

These post-war operations were to become normal for Caliente, especially as the huge American presence in Japan, China, and Korea, promised to continue into the indefinite future.

Upon the outbreak of war in Korea in June 1950, Caliente returned to wartime operations, supplying fuel oil and avgas to the Formosa Patrol Force and U.S. 7th Fleet in the Far East.

The worn down oiler, in dire need of maintenance after delivering over 750,000 barrels of fuel to United Nations ships during the war, began her third yard overhaul later that month.

In August 1954, the oiler joined Operation Passage to Freedom, the sea lift of anti-communist Vietnamese out of communist-held territory following the Geneva peace agreements in 1954.

Caliente operated out of Touraine Bay, refueling some of the 74 amphibious and 39 transports involved in the evacuation of some 300,000 refugees and military personnel from Haiphong to Saigon.

The oiler also participated in Operation Redwing, a series of five atmospheric nuclear tests off Eniwetok and Bikini Atolls in the Marshall Islands between 3–27 July 1956.

She then returned to more mundane cargo runs in the western Pacific, including the ironic task of providing replenishment for Japanese Self-Defense Force warships.

The new decade began with Caliente conducting WestPac Ops with U.S. 7th Fleet units, including underway replenishment of Kearsarge and Ticonderoga, in the western Pacific.

After another repair period in Todd Shipyard, San Pedro, California, and tender availability at Long Beach, the oiler sailed for another WestPac tour in 1961.

For ten days she steamed above the Arctic Circle, encountering intermittent fog and numerous whales, to refuel the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey ship USC&GS Surveyor, before departing for the warmer waters of California.

After winning the Battle Efficiency "E", and the green "C" for Communications Excellence, Caliente entered Willamette Iron and Steel Works shipyard at Portland, Oregon, on 6 January 1964.

The oiler, however, was plagued by erratic generator failures and spent the following three months under restricted availability at Subic Bay, Philippines before returning to Long Beach.

She made nine patrol cruises before the end of the year, carrying bulk and packaged fuels, bottled gases, fleet freight, mail, and personnel to the warships on station off Vietnam.

The oiler conducted eight more line runs, interspersed with port visits to Hong Kong and Singapore, before departing for Auckland, New Zealand, on 12 July.

After returning to Long Beach 24 August the oiler underwent her standard upkeep period and then commenced a series of training exercises off the coast.

Line runs to Vietnam continued until 10 July when the oiler replenished task groups in the Sea of Japan, where she earned the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal.

These "line swings" were similar to previous tours; coastal areas were visited, including port replenishment operations at An Thoi and Vung Tau, and followed by a fuel consolidation on Yankee Station.

Caliente conducted seven line swings, interspersed with fuel loadouts at Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and a typhoon on 12–14 September, before departing the South China Sea on 3 October.

The successful invasion of East Pakistan by India, with the accompanying fighting and unrest, led to U.S. naval forces being sent to assist, if need be, in the evacuation of American citizens.

She loaded fuel, a successful trial experiment to determine the feasibility of using the port on a regular basis, and made a line swing along the Vietnamese coast.

Three more line swings lasted until 22 June when Caliente conducted a training exercise, "Sharkhunt II", with ships of the Taiwanese Navy.

On 22 July she departed for Yokosuka and, after another exercise with Taiwanese ships and training Japanese Naval Defense Force midshipmen, Caliente put into port on 2 August.