On 10 January 1944, the new aircraft carrier departed Boston, steamed to Hampton Roads, Virginia, and remained there until the last day of the month, when she sailed for Trinidad, her base of operations through 22 February.

As the force neared Marcus, it split, sending San Jacinto north to search for Japanese picket boats while Wasp and Essex launched strikes on 19 and 20 May, aimed at installations on the island.

American planes encountered heavy antiaircraft fire but still managed to do enough damage to prevent Japanese forces on the island from interfering with the impending assault on Saipan.

Early the following morning, 19 June, aircraft from Mitscher's carriers headed for Guam to neutralize that island for the coming battle and in a series of dogfights, destroyed many Japanese land-based planes.

In the evening, three of Mitscher's four carrier task groups headed west in search of Ozawa's retiring fleet, leaving only TG 58.4 and a gun line of old battleships in the immediate vicinity of the Marianas to cover ground forces on Saipan.

[1] When the carriers spotted the first returning plane at 2030 that night, Rear Admiral J. J. Clark defied the menace of Japanese submarines by ordering all lights to be turned on to guide the weary fliers home.

[1] When fuel calculations indicated that no aircraft which had not returned could still be aloft, Mitscher ordered the carriers to reverse course and resume the stern chase of Ozawa's surviving ships—more in the hope of finding any downed fliers who might still be alive and pulling them from the sea than in the expectation of overtaking Japan's First Mobile Fleet before it reached the protection of the Emperor's land-based planes.

The force then parted, with TGs 58.1 and 58.3 steaming back north for further raids to keep the Bonin and Volcano Islands neutralized while Wasp in TG 58.2 was retiring toward the Marshalls for replenishment at Eniwetok which she reached on 2 August.

However, the victory was costly to the United States Navy, for TF 38 lost 79 planes and 64 pilots and air crewmen, while cruisers Canberra and Houston and carrier Franklin received damaging, but nonlethal, torpedo and bomb hits.

After steaming to waters east of Luzon, TG 58.1 began to launch strikes against that island on the 18th and continued the attack the following day, hitting Manila for the first time since it was occupied by the Japanese early in the war.

[1] Meanwhile, late in the afternoon of 24 October—after Kurita's Center Force had turned away from San Bernardino Strait in apparent retreat—Halsey's scout planes finally located Ozawa's carriers less than 200 mi (320 km) north of TF 38.

[1] While his planes were in the air, McCain's carriers continued to speed westward to lessen the distance of his pilots' return flight and to be in optimum position at dawn to launch more warplanes at the fleeing enemy force.

However, the respite—during which Rear Admiral Montgomery took command of TG 38.1 when McCain fleeted up to relieve Mitscher as TF 38—was brief; Japanese land-based planes attacked troops on the Leyte beachhead on 1 November.

There, the carriers received greater complements of fighter planes, and in late November and early December, conducted training exercises to prepare them better to deal with the new kamikaze threat.

[1] During the night, Mitscher turned the carriers toward the Volcano Islands to be on hand to provide air support for the Marines who would land on beaches of Iwo Jima on the morning of 19 February.

Moreover, visibility was so bad the next day that raids on Nagoya were called off, and the carriers steamed south toward the Ryūkyūs to bomb and reconnoiter Okinawa, the next prize to be taken from the Japanese Empire.

In a series of strikes, unique in the almost complete absence of enemy airborne planes, Wasp pilots struck Yokosuka Naval Base near Tokyo, numerous airfields, and hidden manufacturing centers.

The carrier, despite the hazardous job of flying from such a shortened deck, continued to launch her planes on missions of mercy or patrol as they carried food, medicine, and long-deserved luxuries to American prisoners of war at Narumi, near Nagoya.

In the summer of 1948, Wasp was taken out of the reserve fleet and placed in the New York Naval Shipyard for refitting and alterations to enable her to accommodate the larger, heavier, and faster planes of the jet age.

After taking part in the NATO Exercise Mainbrace at Greenock, Scotland, and enjoying a liberty period at Plymouth, Wasp headed home and arrived at Norfolk early on the morning of 13 October 1952.

[1] After transiting the Suez Canal and crossing the Indian Ocean, making port in Columbo, Ceylon, the carrier made a brief visit to the Philippines and onto Japan and then conducted strenuous operations with the famed TF 77.

Wasp left San Diego on the last day of January 1957, rounded Cape Horn for operations in the South Atlantic and Caribbean Sea, then proceeded to Boston, where she arrived on 21 March.

The operations continued day and night to coordinate and develop the task group's team capabilities until she returned to Boston on 13 December 1958 and remained over the Christmas holiday season.

In mid-July, the carrier was ordered to the South Atlantic, where she stood by when civil strife broke out in the newly independent Congo and operated in support of the United Nations airlift.

The early part of 1963 had Wasp conducting antisubmarine warfare exercises off the Virginia Capes and steaming along the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica in support of the presidential visit.

Wasp served as carrier qualification duty ship for the Naval Air Training Command from 24 January to 26 February 1967 and conducted operations in the Gulf of Mexico and off the east coast of Florida.

The northern European portion of the cruise consisted of several operational periods and port visits to Portsmouth, England; Firth of Clyde, Scotland; Hamburg, Germany; and Lisbon, Portugal.

After refresher training at Bermuda, she stopped briefly at Rota, then proceeded to the Mediterranean for participation in the National Week VIII exercises with several destroyers for the investigation of known Soviet submarine operating areas.

Having successfully completed the week-long exercise, Wasp was heading home on 8 May when an ABC television team embarked and filmed a short news report on carrier antisubmarine warfare operations.

The ship was sold on 21 May 1973 to the Union Minerals and Alloys Corporation, of New York City,[1] and subsequently scrapped at the former site of the Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company shipyard, Kearny, New Jersey.