After a fitting-out period complicated by the necessity for repairs to her power plant, the destroyer escort departed Galveston, Texas, on 30 March 1944 for her shakedown cruise.

She completed voyage repairs on the 14th and moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she served for a month as target ship for the Atlantic Fleet Torpedo Squadron Training School.

Arriving home on 25 October, she again completed voyage repairs and conducted anti-submarine warfare (ASW) exercises at Casco Bay.

That voyage took her via Gibraltar to Oran, Algeria, thence back to the United States, at Boston where she arrived at the end of the last week in December.

She completed repairs in the navy yard at Charlestown early in January 1945, and then moved to Norfolk where she served briefly as a school ship.

After a week of repairs at Manus, the warship received orders assigning her to the Philippine Sea Frontier and got underway for Leyte.

Early in May, she made a high-speed mail delivery on the Philippine circuit, visiting Zamboanga, Mindoro, Iloilo, Manila, and Subic Bay.

She departed Subic Bay on 27 July with a large group of LSTs and LSMs, and after evading a typhoon, arrived at Okinawa on 4 August.

En route, she received orders to assume plane guard duty on a station located about 100 miles north of Luzon.

Over the next seven years her training cruises took her north to British Columbia, south as far as Callao, Peru, and west to the Hawaiian Islands.