In September 1922 she was attached to the submarine base at Coco Solo, Panama Canal Zone, operating in the Caribbean.

On 25 July 1940 the Quail landed a force to construct a naval air station on Palmyra Atoll.

She shot down enemy aircraft and swept mine fields to keep open a channel providing access to the South Harbor at Corregidor.

This enabled U.S. submarines to safely pass and surface at night, delivering goods and removing critical personnel from Corregidor.

Chief Petty Officer Virgil Byrd, sick with wet beriberi and the beginnings of congestive heart failure, was beaten to death on 11 May 1943 at the POW Camp #3D Yodogawa in Osaka, Japan, for selling an extra pair of shoes to a Japanese workman.

At the end of May, the Japanese loaded Crotty and his fellow prisoners into watercraft transferring POWs from Corregidor Island to Manila, where they were marched through the city to Bilibid Prison on the "Walk of Shame" and eventually taken by railroad in boxcars to the Cabanatuan POW camp in northern Luzon.