Late in the spring of 1946, she joined USS Little Rock in an extended cruise to Europe and visited ports in England, Scotland, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Portugal, and the Netherlands before entering the Mediterranean for her first tour of duty with the U.S. 6th Fleet.

[1] At the conclusion of the yard work on 8 March, she steamed to her new home port, Newport, Rhode Island, and for two years cruised along the U.S. East Coast, serving primarily as gunnery training ship for the Atlantic Destroyer Force.

After a brief stop at Norfolk, Virginia, at the conclusion of those maneuvers, Warrington headed north at the end of October for cold weather training near the Arctic Circle, returning to Newport on 20 November.

The following month, she conducted antisubmarine warfare (ASW) exercises with USS Dogfish out of Newport News, Virginia, before returning to that port for a brief yard availability.

[1] The ship next returned north to Newport for a tour of duty with the Operational Development Force detachment during which her division tested ASW tactics in company with USS Saipan along the coast of Newfoundland and in the waters around Iceland.

[1] Warrington passed through the newly constructed St. Lawrence Seaway and participated in the opening ceremonies for the waterway led by Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain and President Dwight D. Eisenhower of the United States.

At the conclusion of those ceremonies—held at Montreal, Canada, on 26 June -- Warrington continued on her mission, visiting a series of American ports on the Great Lakes, including Chicago, Illinois, Detroit, Michigan, and Sault Ste.

East coast operations—broken only by a visit to Washington, D.C., in January 1961 for the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy and duty as a recovery ship for a Project Mercury test in February—dominated her schedule until late in the spring of 1961.

[1] On 12 May, the destroyer entered the New York Naval Shipyard for major alterations during her Mark I Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization (FRAM I) overhaul.

Those modifications reflected the enormous technological advances registered in antisubmarine warfare since the end of World War II and might be considered the beginning of the final phase in the shift of mission for destroyers from a surface-attack role to that of a submarine hunter.

She emerged from the New York Naval Shipyard on 4 May 1962 and began various post-conversion qualifications and tests which culminated in refresher training in the Guantanamo Bay area during June and July.

Later that month, when the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred, the destroyer joined a special ASW task group which, though it did not participate in the actual quarantine, performed a support role for the ships so engaged.

[1] During early April 1963, the warship helped to conduct the unsuccessful search-and-rescue attempt prompted by the loss of the nuclear-powered submarine USS Thresher during deep-submergence tests.

Between 8 September and 18 December, the ship made another brief deployment to the Mediterranean, highlighted by Operation "Masterstroke" and NATO Exercise "Teamwork" during the outbound voyage.

[1] On 26 December 1966, she departed Hong Kong to return to the Gulf of Tonkin, this time for plane guard duty with the fast carriers on Yankee Station.

[1] Following a visit to Hong Kong and another repair period—at Subic Bay in the Philippines—the destroyer resumed plane guard duty in the Gulf of Tonkin on 27 February.

On 10 March, she parted company with the carrier USS Ticonderoga to conduct a gunfire support mission in the III Corps zone near Rung Sat.

[1] The Mediterranean ports included Naples Italy, Golfe-Juan France, Valletta Malta, Palma Majorca and Rota Spain (for two hours).

Between 10 April and 27 June, the warship voyaged to the West Indies to conduct gunnery drills at Culebra Island and refresher training out of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

She returned to Newport on 27 June and spent the major portion of the summer and the entire fall in an extended upkeep and in preparations for overseas movement.

Following a month of repairs at Boston late in July and early in August, the warship spent most of the remainder of the year in Newport, though she did get underway for two brief periods at sea—once in September for the America's Cup yachting race and again in October to escort USS Forrestal during the carrier's post-repair acceptance trials.

On 16 July, she relieved USS Hamner of Linebacker duty and began her primary blockade and interdiction mission—the destruction of North Vietnamese small craft and observation of communist Chinese merchant shipping.

[1] USS Hull maneuvered alongside to transfer repair personnel, pumps, and shoring equipment to Warrington to address continuing flooding.

[1] Around 1 December 1972, the Navy announced that Warrington had struck two American Mark 36 mines after finding fragments of a specific fuse on the ship.