Following a shakedown cruise to the British West Indies and post-shakedown repairs at Portsmouth, Wahoo got underway for her home port, Pearl Harbor, on 1 December 1952.

The Oriental cruise brought port calls to Hong Kong; Kaohsiung, Taiwan; Apra Harbor, Guam; Yokosuka, Japan; and Manila and Subic Bay in the Philippines.

The warship returned to Pearl Harbor in June 1958 and, soon thereafter, she received the Battle "E" for Submarine Squadron (SubRon) 1 attesting to her overall operational and administrative superiority within the unit.

In November, she began a two-month repair period at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard at the conclusion of which, in January 1959, she resumed local operations.

She returned to Oahu at the beginning of 1960 and, after two months of normal operations once again entered the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard this time for a major overhaul.

The ship stood out of Pearl Harbor on 15 January 1963 to begin a six-month tour of duty during which she added Osaka to her ports of call in Japan.

That cruise ended on 15 July when she reentered Pearl Harbor and resumed her normal Hawaiian schedule of training operations, interrupted between October 1963 and April 1964 by a major overhaul.

During her 1966 western Pacific cruise, which began on 17 February and ended on 29 August, she returned to the combat zone off Vietnam as well as fulfilling a schedule of Seventh Fleet exercises and port visits.

Upon her arrival back to Oahu, the submarine began an extended period of operations in the islands, broken by a major overhaul of 17 months' duration.

That overhaul included radical modifications to her hull structure during which she was lengthened by 15 feet (5 m) to receive the PUFFS passive sonar installation.

During the last week of the month, she again cruised briefly in the combat zone off Vietnam; but, as in the previous deployment, she spent the remainder engaged in a normal Seventh Fleet schedule of operations.

Her next deployment brought with it a visit to Chinhae and Pusan in Korea and a period of combined operations with units of the South Korean Navy.

Back at sea by the middle of September, she resumed local operations – type training, ASW exercises with surface units and aircraft, and torpedo and mine evaluation tests – for the remainder of the year.

She then resumed local operations — including a tour as school ship for prospective commanding officers in November and refresher training in December — which kept her busy until the beginning of April 1976.

Steaming via the Panama Canal; Cartagena, Colombia; Miami, Florida, and Savannah, Georgia, she arrived at New London, Connecticut, on 15 October.