Sperry completed trials and shakedown training, and on 2 August 1942, she reported for duty to the Commander, Submarines, Pacific, at Pearl Harbor.

After cautiously skirting the Solomon Islands and making a three-day stopover at Noumea, New Caledonia, the submarine tender reached Brisbane on 13 November.

[citation needed] Steaming in company with tanker Kern and Coast Guard cutter Taney, she reached Midway Island on 12 June.

The two ships arrived at Guam on 20 October to begin a four-month tour of duty during which she serviced 20 boats, 14 for refit and six for voyage repairs.

During those six months, her stay in the Marianas was interrupted only once, in late November and early December, when she joined submarines Blenny, Blower, Blueback, Charr, Redfish, Sea Cat, and Segundo in a training cruise.

[citation needed] In December 1951, the battle lines in Korea were more or less stabilized along the 38th parallel, and hostilities slowly decreased over the next two years; Sperry gradually returned to her peacetime routine.

Over the next 10 years, she continued to operate out of San Diego, spending most of her time in port servicing the submarines of the fleet, but occasionally getting underway for training cruises along the west coast.

[citation needed] From April–September, 1961 Sperry was at Long Beach Naval Shipyard being brought up to date by a Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization overhaul.

[citation needed] Sperry serviced submarines out of San Diego for another twenty years, until finally decommissioned there on 30 September 1982 and struck from the Naval Vessel Register that same day.

[1] Sperry departed the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet on 28 September 2011 to be cleaned of marine growth and loose exterior paint by Allied Defense Recycling at the former Mare Island Naval Shipyard.