The new escort carrier got underway from Seattle on 17 January 1944 bound for San Francisco where she was immediately pressed into service ferrying stores, airplanes, and military personnel to Hawaii.

On the last day of the month, she departed Narragansett Bay with Rear Admiral Calvin T. Durgin on board as Commander, Task Group 27.7, and steamed eastward conducting squadron and battery training en route to Oran, Algeria.

Tulagi visited Malta on 26 July and then spent the following weeks conducting exercises, which included a dress rehearsal out of African and Italian ports for the coming Operation Dragoon, the invasion of southern France.

Weather was generally good as carrier-based planes conducted spotting missions and made strikes at various targets ashore, including gun emplacements and railway facilities.

On the morning of 5 January, enemy air attackers continued to menace the convoy as it steamed through Mindoro Strait and into the South China Sea.

On 12 January, Tulagi supplied air support for the Lingayen Gulf beachhead; and, the next day, her port battery shot down a suicide plane which had singled out the carrier for destruction.

Before it crashed, the attacker, deflected from Tulagi by withering anti-aircraft fire, crossed astern and to starboard of the escort carrier and vainly attempted to dive into an alternate target.

Assigned alternately to antisubmarine and direct support activities, Tulagi operated continuously off the coast of Okinawa from the end of March until early June.

The carrier took one of her attackers under fire at 4,000 yards, but the Japanese plane came harrowingly close before turning aside to dive into a nearby LST which burst into flames 200 feet high.

The next day, Tulagi resumed her station off Okinawa, providing planes for air strikes called in by ground observers and for running photo-reconnaissance and patrol missions.

After returning to San Diego in January 1946, the veteran escort carrier reported to the 19th Fleet at Port Angeles, Washington, on 2 February 1946 for inactivation.