She arrived in New Orleans on 29 November 1943, and got underway 6 days later for Panama, where she received further training before sailing for Pearl Harbor on 2 January 1944.

Rock, in company with Tilefish and Sawfish, departed Majuro on 22 June 1944, in a coordinated attack group to patrol the Luzon Strait.

At dawn on 19 July Rock attacked a Japanese convoy of seven large ships and three escorts, firing 10 torpedoes, six of which exploded.

She launched four torpedoes, two of which seemed to hit but, again Rock was forced down by depth charges and unable to assess damage to her targets.

During the remainder of her time on station, Rock weathered a severe typhoon and witnessed the sinking of Japanese submarine I-29 by Sawfish.

Rock departed Pearl Harbor on 9 September 1944, en route for the South China Sea for her fourth patrol.

On 12 January 1945, the U.S. Navy destroyer USS English (DD-696) mistook her for a Japanese sailboat while Rock was on the surface in the South China Sea off Japanese-occupied French Indochina and opened gunfire on her at a range of 9,200 yards (8,400 m).

At the start of her sixth patrol, which lasted from 7 March to 4 May 1945, she picked up 15 merchant seamen from the SS Peter Silvester, adrift in a life raft for 32 days, and landed them at Exmouth.

She was officially credited with damaging 42,282 gross register tons of enemy shipping during her six war patrols, Rock participated in Navy Day celebrations at New Orleans, then proceeded to New London where she began inactivation in November 1945.

On 23 July 1954, she departed San Diego for the western Pacific area and a six-month tour on the Taiwan Strait Patrol.

She was sold for scrap on 17 August 1972 This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.