She served in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and provided destroyer escort protection against submarine and air attack for Navy vessels and convoys.

In August 1939 he reported to cargo ship Gold Star, home ported at Guam, before returning to Newport News for fitting out of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet.

She was laid down 5 April 1943, by the Consolidated Steel Co., Orange, Texas; launched 29 June 1943; sponsored by Mrs. Byron B. Newell, wife of Lt. Comdr.

[1] Newell had no ship's Doctor and two of the Pharmacist's Mates aboard were awarded the Legion of Merit for their courage and fortitude in treating the wounded that were recovered.

[1] In February 1945, after the last of her six convoy trips, Newell reported to Norfolk, Virginia, for special duty in the Operational Training Command, Atlantic Fleet.

She tested sonobuoys, determined the minimum speed possible for DEs while dropping various types of depth charges, and trained newly commissioned officers.

On 20 October orders arrived sending the destroyer escort to Charleston, South Carolina., where she decommissioned 20 November 1945 and entered the Atlantic Reserve Fleet.

[1] Newell recommissioned in the U.S. Coast Guard 20 July 1951, steamed to Chesapeake Bay for shakedown, then transited the Panama Canal and proceeded to Mare Island Naval Shipyard for post activation overhaul and conversion to a WDE-type ship for ocean station search and rescue duty.

She arrived on her first ocean station 27 April and for the next year and a half operated out of Pearl Harbor in the northwestern Pacific, ranging north to the Aleutians and west to Japan.

Following first phase inactivation at Pearl Harbor the DE arrived Long Beach, California, 21 February 1954, decommissioned 31 March, and entered the Pacific Reserve Fleet.

[1] Fitted out with the latest electronic equipment, manned for the first time by a Navy crew and reclassified DER–322, Newell recommissioned at Long Beach 20 August 1957, and steamed to her new home port, Pearl Harbor.

During this period she also served in Operation Cosmos, the escort line for President Eisenhower's flight to the Far East in the spring of 1960; and provided weather surveillance for Johnston Island/Christmas Island nuclear tests.

On her first Operation Market Time patrol, just north of the Mekong Delta, she searched many junks and several steel-hulled vessels to help stop infiltration of arms, ammunition, and supplies into South Vietnam to support Viet Cong forces.

[1] On New Year's Day, 1966 Newell departed the "Market Time" area and sailed via Subic Bay and Japan, for home, arriving Pearl Harbor 3 February.

She headed back toward the Vietnamese coast on the last day of October and relieved USS Lowe on Market Time Area II, 2 November.

Newell departed Vietnam for the last time on the 28th, and steamed for Hawaii via Hong Kong; Subic Bay; Sydney, Australia; and Suva, Fiji Islands arriving Pearl Harbor 29 February 1968.