After proceeding to Baltimore, she was decommissioned on 9 January 1945; converted to a battle damage repair ship by the Maryland Drydock Company; and recommissioned on 20 April 1945.

[3][2] In May 1945, the new battle damage repair ship conducted shakedown exercises in Chesapeake Bay; then, on 22 May, she departed Norfolk, in company with Patroclus.

[3] Ironically, on the very day – 6 August 1945 – Ulysses arrived at Saipan, only 5 mi (8.0 km) away on Tinian Island, a plane named the Enola Gay took off and flew to Hiroshima, Japan, and dropped the world's first atomic bomb on that city.

The repair ship lost three anchors in attempting to hold her position in the anchorage during the height of the storm and emerged from the ordeal with a six-foot (1.8 m) hole in one side.

After transiting the Panama Canal and unloading ammunition at Charleston, South Carolina, in mid-May, she proceeded to Jacksonville, for preservation work.