During the next month, she established advanced seaplane bases in the Gulf of Fonseca, Nicaragua, and in the Galapagos Islands, then returned to San Diego to prepare for Pacific duty.

Fulton returned to Pearl Harbor on 13 June 1944 and gave her services to submarines there for a month, then at Midway from 18 July to 8 September, and then at Saipan until 25 April 1945.

After a west coast overhaul, Fulton served as tender at Pearl Harbor from February–May 1946, then sailed for Bikini Atoll to participate in Operation Crossroads—atomic weapons tests in the Marshalls—that summer.

She first crossed the Atlantic in the fall of 1957 for Operation Natoflex, visiting Rothesay, Scotland, and Portland, England, before returning to New London.

In August, she sailed to New York City for the celebration of the arrival of Nautilus from her historic submerged passage under the North Pole.

She was modernized in 1983-1984 during an extensive overhaul conducted at Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut and General Dynamics, Quincy, Massachusetts.

In 1988, Submarine Squadron 10 (SubRon 10) — of which Fulton was the flagship—included Jack, Tinosa, Dace, Whale, Greenling, Gato, Pargo, Trepang, Billfish and the torpedo retriever Labrador (TWR-681).