Leyte joined battleship Wisconsin on a good will cruise along the western seaboard of South America in the fall of 1946 before returning to the Caribbean on 18 November to resume shakedown operations.

In the years preceding the Korean War, the Leyte participated in numerous other fleet exercises in the Atlantic and Caribbean, trained naval reservists, and deployed four times to the Mediterranean: April–June 1947, July–November 1947, September 1949 – January 1950, and May–August 1950.

The deployment of Leyte to the Mediterranean in mid-1950 included a demonstration of airpower over Beirut, Lebanon, on 14 August, supporting the Middle East against communist pressure.

Conversion completed on 4 January 1954, Leyte departed Boston for Quonset Point, Rhode Island, as flagship of Carrier Division 18 (CarDiv 18).

She was redesignated AVT-10 and decommissioned both on 15 May 1959, and was assigned to the Philadelphia group of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet, where she remained until sold for scrap in September 1970 and completed in Chesapeake, Virginia.

On 4 December 1950, the first African-American to complete the Navy's basic flight training program, Ensign Jesse L. Brown, who was assigned to Fighter Squadron 32 (VF-32) aboard Leyte, was killed in action while supporting ground troops at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir.

[4] At 15:15 on 16 October 1953, while at the South Boston Naval Annex[5] and still under conversion to an antisubmarine carrier, Leyte suffered an explosion in her port catapult machinery room.

The inscription reads, in part: "In memory of our shipmates and civilians lost in the disastrous explosion aboard the USS Leyte on October 16, 1953 while in the Boston Naval Shipyard.