Promoted to lieutenant (junior grade) in October, he remained on board that carrier after the United States entered World War II.

Failing to return from that mission, Hale was presumed killed in action and was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for extraordinary achievement in aerial combat and his " ... courageous determination and aggressiveness ... attacking enemy aircraft in spite of fierce fighter opposition."

Back in the Norfolk area by 3 November, Roy O. Hale shifted to Green Cove Springs, Florida, in early December and began inactivation.

She was decommissioned on 11 July 1946 and was berthed there, with the Atlantic Reserve Fleet, until ordered activated to participate in the continental air defense program established in the 1950s.

In December 1955, Roy O. Hale entered the Boston Navy Yard for conversion to a radar picket escort.

Based at Newport, Rhode Island, as of 2 July, she continued that duty, steaming on alternate radar picket stations from Newfoundland to the Azores into the 1960s.