[1] Although her active service began late in World War I, Waters still managed to get in two round-trip voyages to the British Isles and one to the Azores before the armistice in November 1918.

On 1 May, she stood out of port, in company with Craven, Dent, Hopewell, Philip, Roper, and Stockton, to take up station as part of the picket of destroyers dotting the path of the transatlantic flight to be conducted by Navy flying boats.

[1] Early the next morning, she weighed anchor to participate in the search for NC-3; however, she soon learned that NC-3 had been sighted off Ponta Delgada, navigating on the surface, and heading for that port under its own power.

After stops at Pearl Harbor, Midway, and Guam, Waters steamed into Manila Bay on 24 August and reported for duty with the Asiatic Fleet at the Cavite Navy Yard.

After a week of repairs at Mare Island Navy Yard, Waters steamed south and, upon her arrival at San Diego on 23 October, immediately began preparations for inactivation.

Late in April 1936, she steamed south to the Panama Canal where she again joined in the maneuvers associated with the annual fleet concentrations which were conducted on the Pacific side of the isthmus.

Sometime during the first half of the year, Waters and her sisters in the division had received the latest sound gear—high frequency directional sonar which allowed a destroyer to locate a submarine more accurately.

The new equipment enabled submarine hunters to estimate the interloper's bearing and distance and therefore increased the probability of success of the destroyer's depth charge attacks.

[1] After a month patrolling the California coast, Waters slipped her moorings at San Diego on 31 January 1942 and headed north for duty with the defense forces of the 13th Naval District.

Her mission, however, remained the same as she plied the cold Waters of the northeastern Pacific between such ports as Kodiak, Dutch Harbor, Chernofski, Adak, and Sitka—returning periodically to Seattle.

[1] The exigencies of the campaign for Guadalcanal— where neither side enjoyed the overwhelming local naval and air supremacy which insured victory in every other amphibious operation of the war—necessitated an increase in the number of high-speed transports.

After a five-day stop at Pearl Harbor, she resumed her voyage and reported for duty with the South Pacific Amphibious Force at Noumea, New Caledonia, on 21 March.

The remnants of the Japanese defense forces had evacuated Guadalcanal over three months before, and the American Navy, Marine Corps, and Army possessed relatively secure bases—at that island and across Ironbottom Sound at Port Purvis on Florida Island—from which to begin the climb up the Solomons staircase toward the Bismarcks and Rabaul.

[1] New Georgia, the center island of a cluster which, with Vella Lavella, made up the southern branch of the Solomon Archipelago, constituted the second rung on the ladder to Rabaul.

[1] Four days later, she received orders to move to Guadalcanal to embark five officers and 187 men of the 4th Marine Raider Battalion, part of a force hastily collected to occupy Segi Point on the southern coast of New Georgia.

After a daylight passage back down the Slot, Waters and her sister ship returned to Guadalcanal late that afternoon and thence moved to Port Purvis without incident.

Waters completed disembarkation and unloading operations without further incident and, by 0855, stood down Blanche Channel in company with Dent to return to Purvis Bay, where she anchored that afternoon.

The force she landed, a mixture of Marine Corps and Army units, succeeded in isolating and reducing the Japanese garrisons at Bairoko and on Enogai Inlet while the troops in the south concentrated upon the seizure of Munda without fear of interference from the north.

[1] In mid-August, while the troops she had ferried to New Georgia over the previous seven weeks continued to mop up that island and the smaller ones surrounding it, Waters trained her sights on a new objective.

During the last voyage, however, enemy dive bombers attacked her convoy just as it arrived off Cape Torokina at 0755 on 17 November; the warship's antiaircraft batteries quickly engaged the intruders and scored a kill on a Japanese Aichi D3A "Val."

Two days later, she weighed anchor again to escort Liberty ships Amy Lowell and Juan Cabrillo,[a] as far as Lady Elliot Island and then continued independently to Australia.

En route back to the Solomons, Waters received orders detaching her from the convoy and instructions to rendezvous with Sea Barb[b] and see that ship safely to Auckland, New Zealand.

The following day, she stopped at Vella Lavella and took on additional troops, mostly members of the 207th Battalion, 3rd New Zealand Division, before continuing on to the Green Islands for the actual occupation.

Between 18 and 21 February, the warship made another round-trip voyage to the Green Islands to ferry a mixed bag of Navy, Army, and New Zealand forces before reentering Purvis Bay for the remainder of the month.

The assault force hit the beaches at about 0845, but Waters' complement of marines remained embarked throughout the day and the night of 15 and 16 June while she screened the transport area.

She arrived in the Marianas two days later, parted company with the task unit, and entered the anchorage off Guam, which American forces had invaded while the fast transport was at Eniwetok.

During the three days before the actual invasion, Waters protected the bombardment battleships from enemy submarines and supported the UDTs in their preinvasion reconnaissance of Iwo Jima's beaches.

[1] Following ten days in Ulithi lagoon, Waters steamed out of the atoll on 21 March and joined TG 54.2, part of Rear Admiral M. L. Deyo's Gunfire and Covering Force, for the voyage to the Ryukyus.

Though she claimed no kill, Waters' antiaircraft battery was probably instrumental in deflecting that kamikaze's aim and causing him to miss his target by a mere 75 yards (69 m).

Early that evening, a kamikaze crashed Morris, and Waters rushed to her assistance, helping to control the fires that blazed on board the destroyer for two hours.