Upon completing that tour, he travelled to Mare Island Navy Yard, reporting on board USS Preston on 24 July 1936 while it fitted out, and became the ship’s gunnery officer upon its commissioning on 27 October 1936.

He also later received an Award star in lieu of a second Navy Cross for earlier actions on 26 and 30 October and 3 November in which he had rescued downed aviators and survivors of USS Hornet under hazardous conditions.

Although 7 of her crew were killed and 35 wounded, the fires were quickly extinguished and effective damage control measures enabled Fox to reach Kerama Retto under her own power for temporary repairs.

After refresher training at San Diego, Fox sailed on 30 September 1945 for the East Coast, arriving at New York City 17 October 1945 for the Navy Day celebrations.

On 29 September, while bound for Trieste, she struck a World War II era mine which severely damaged her stern, killed 3 and injured 12 of her crew.

Sailing from Newport, Rhode Island, 20 July 1948, Fox returned to the Mediterranean and visited various ports there until 28 September 1948, when she joined the cruiser USS Huntington for a goodwill cruise to Mombasa, Kenya; Durban, South Africa; and round Cape Horn to Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, and Montevideo.

She got underway from Yokosuka 21 June 1952, and sailed west through the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea to complete a round-the-world cruise at Norfolk 19 August 1952, this time in a reverse direction.

Fox made a midshipman training cruise to Nova Scotia from 20 June to 8 July 1955, and served tours of duty with the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean from 7 November 1956 to 20 February 1957.

Between 3 September and 22 December 1957, she joined elements of the British and Canadian navies for a NATO exercise in the North Atlantic, visiting the Mediterranean before returning to Norfolk to resume local operations.

From June through the end of 1960, H. Fox operated off the East Coast, cruising north of the Arctic Circle on NATO maneuvers, and patrolling in the Caribbean during political unrest in Central America.

In February and March 1963, the ship took part in Operation Springboard - 63, an extensive training cruise in the Caribbean, after which she resumed her ASW ready duties with the Atlantic Fleet.

In June, a NATO exercise called New Look took the ship to the North Atlantic for ten days of highly competitive ASW operations with the Royal Canadian Navy.

In September 1968, 323 miles southeast of Charleston, South Carolina, while en route to Vietnam, a flashback fire in the aft fireroom erupted, killing three seamen and injuring five.

From February to September, she operated in the Vietnam area on a variety of assignments which included plane-guarding in the Tonkin Gulf, and harassment and interdiction fire on a regular basis.