[1] Following her shakedown cruise to San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Guantanamo Bay, Vulcan underwent post-shakedown repairs at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in mid-August.

Assigned to the Atlantic Fleet Train on the 20th, the repair ship departed Philadelphia the following day and proceeded, via Casco Bay, Maine, to Argentia, Newfoundland.

[1] Prompted by fears that the Tirpitz would break out into the Atlantic as her sister ship, Bismarck had done in the spring of 1941, the Navy dispatched a task force to Iceland to deter such a move.

By the fall of 1941, American destroyers were engaged in convoy operations half-way across the Atlantic, turning their charges over to British units at the MOMP (mid-ocean meeting point).

With 11 bluejackets dead, Kearny limped into Reykjavík, a gaping hole and buckled plating disfiguring her starboard side below and aft of the bridge.

Meanwhile, on 7 December 1941, a Japanese task force had struck Pearl Harbor and severely crippled the battleships of the Pacific Fleet, plunging the United States into war on both oceans.

Vulcan – bound for home in company with Tarazed (AF-13), Livermore (DD-429), and the familiar Kearny – departed "Valley Forge" on 26 April 1942 and arrived at Boston on 2 May.

[1] After hostilities with Japan ceased, Vulcan shifted to Okinawa and entered Buckner Bay in the wake of a destructive typhoon which had forced some ships aground and had severely damaged others.

Leading a group of service force ships and oilers through dangerous, still-mined waters, Vulcan arrived in Hiro Wan, near Kure, Japan, on 8 October.

Departing Yokosuka on 9 March 1946, the repair ship sailed for the east coast of the United States, calling at Pearl Harbor and transiting the Panama Canal en route.

Vulcan sailed to San Juan, where she provided essential repair services to the ships operating on the "quarantine" line off Cuban shores to prevent the arrival of any further Russian military equipment.

Between 24 March and 21 April, Liberty lay alongside the repair ship before getting underway later that spring for the fateful overseas deployment in which she was attacked by Israeli planes and motor torpedo boats off El Arish on the morning of 8 June 1967.

Captain J. E. McConville, the ship's thirty-fourth commanding officer, guided Vulcan to a successful completion of the difficult overhaul and subsequent refresher training.

In May 1983, while en route to Florida from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Vulcan assisted a Haitian refugee boat, the " Rose Carida, " adrift without power for three days.

On 1 October, Vulcan left for Málaga, Spain, before arriving on station off Al Masirah, Oman where she was scheduled to relieve USS Yosemite (AD-19), another Second World War era vessel.

[citation needed] Vulcan was decommissioned on 30 September 1991, struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 28 July 1992 and laid up in the Atlantic Reserve Fleet.

[1] She was transferred to the Maritime Administration on 1 February 1999, for lay up in the National Defense Reserve Fleet on the James River, Fort Eustis, Virginia.