Upon completion of a short training period at Norfolk, Virginia, Nelson got underway 7 June to take part in the invasion of Sicily.

This group was to land assault troops on beachheads near Gela, Sicily, to expand the captured area, and to seize the nearby airfield at Ponte Olivo.

Caught in the blue-white glare of searchlights, landing craft were subjected to intense fire, and LCIs took direct hits.

Shortly after dawn Axis aircraft joined the fight, flying out of the Acate River valley on the eastern coast and attempting to bomb and strafe Allied ships, landing craft, and beaches.

German dive bombers buzzed in on a surprise attack from the northeast at 17:33 on 12 July, dropping bombs and making strafing runs.

E-boats were the German version of PT boats – speedy, agile, hard-hitting, and hard to hit.

Thus far her only contact with the enemy had been in the form of a glide bomb which had exploded harmlessly off the starboard quarter during her first night in the area.

4 mount (the destroyer's transom is now on display in the Museum of Underwater Wrecks, having been raised from the bottom of the Baie de Seine by the diver Jacques Lemonchois).

After emergency repairs at Derry, Northern Ireland, where her #2 turret and torpedo tubes were removed as a weight saving/stability measure, the destroyer was towed to Boston where she received a new stern.

She departed New York late in February 1945 on a convoy run to Oran, Algeria, returning 31 March.

Throughout April and May Nelson served as plane guard and screen for the escort carrier Card, and on 16 May Lt. Comdr.

The destroyer transited the Panama Canal on 1 August en route Pearl Harbor, and then to Tokyo Bay 3–14 September, following Japan's surrender.

Freeman as commanding officer; and on 3 November, Nelson sailed for New York, via Cape Town, South Africa, arriving 6 December.