The oiler was assigned to Squadron 8, Base Force Train, and operated between the west coast and the Hawaiian Islands for the next two years.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, fortune ordained that Tippecanoe be safe in San Francisco.

She made contact with Rear Admiral Aubrey W. Fitch's task unit—built around USS Lexington (CV-2)—and, on the 2nd and 3rd, fueled the venerable carrier and her supporting ships.

Drained bone dry, Tippecanoe then headed for Efate where she arrived on 4 May, the day Rear Admiral Fletcher's USS Yorktown (CV-5) airmen struck the Japanese seaplane base at Tulagi to open the preliminaries of the historic action that stopped Japan's southward advance.

Tippecanoe departed Pearl Harbor on 9 August 1942 and reached Alaskan waters on the 15th to begin three years in the frigid northern latitudes of the Pacific.

For the remainder of the war, she steamed the resupply circuit between such ports as Kodiak, Dutch Harbor, Adak, Akutan, Cold Bay, and Attu and made periodic voyages south to Seattle and San Francisco to replenish.