Forrest Royal's operations in the period prior to the Korean War illustrated the varied capability of the modern destroyer, and the wide range of missions which such ships are assigned.

She conducted special tests for the Bureau of Ships in the Caribbean, served as plane guard and escort for aircraft carriers, took part in the development of antisubmarine warfare and fired in shore bombardment exercises.

The destroyer's other activities included shore bombardment, blockade, and escort all around the Korean coast, and extensive operations with carrier task forces conducting air strikes.

Through the next year and a half, the destroyer sailed out of Newport, Rhode Island, for exercises along the Atlantic coast and in the Caribbean, often serving with carriers out of Pensacola, Florida.

NATO operations took her to European waters once more that fall, and on 11 July 1958, she sailed from Newport for Morehead City, North Carolina, where amphibious ships of her force embarked Marines for landing exercises at Puerto Rico.

Forrest Royal sailed on through the Suez Canal to bring her additional strength to the 7th Fleet as it intensified its activities in the Taiwan Straits in response to renewed Communist shelling of Quemoy and Matsu through September.

She joined in the naval review on Lake Saint-Louis 26 June taken by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, and called at United States and Canadian ports to greet thousands of visitors.

In Operation Sea Dragon, begun in October 1966, cruisers, destroyers, and for one month battleship USS New Jersey ranged the North Vietnamese littoral sinking Communist supply craft, shelling coastal batteries and radar sites, and complementing the aerial interdiction effort by bombarding the infiltration routes ashore.

Periodically, this group reinforced the Seventh Fleet cruisers and destroyers providing naval gunfire support to allied forces in South Vietnam.