Following shakedown training in the West Indies and post-shakedown availability at Philadelphia, William V. Pratt joined Destroyer Squadron (DesRon) 18 as an active unit of the fleet in September 1962.

Following six months of normal operations along the East Coast and in the West Indies, William V. Pratt departed Mayport on 20 June 1967 for her only deployment to the western Pacific during the American involvement in the Vietnam War.

En route, she transited the Panama Canal and made port calls at San Diego, Pearl Harbor, Midway, and Guam before arriving at Subic Bay in the Philippines on 28 July.

Early in August, she departed the Philippines for the Gulf of Tonkin and duty on the northern sea-air rescue (SAR) station.

After upkeep in Subic Bay, she headed back to the Gulf of Tonkin late in the month to take up duty on the south SAR station.

That tour of duty lasted until the latter part of November at which time she departed the gulf for port visits to Hong Kong and Kaohsiung on the island of Taiwan.

She did one more period of duty on the south SAR station before leaving the western Pacific via Yokosuka in Japan, Midway Island, and Pearl Harbor.

After refresher training in the West Indies, William V. Pratt resumed her routine of alternating 2nd and 6th Fleet tours of duty.

On 1 June she arrived in Rota, Spain for turnover ceremonies before heading north on the 3rd for a series of hunter/killer exercises and visits to northern European ports.

In addition to the usual exercises and port visits, that deployment included duty with a special contingency force assembled in the eastern Mediterranean in response to Syrian intervention in the Jordanian civil war on the side of militant, anti-government, Arab guerrillas.

The warship participated in the usual schedule of training evolutions, multiship exercises, and port visits through the spring and early summer.

She reentered Mayport on 8 July and began post-deployment stand-down and preparations for her decommissioning incident to a major modernization overhaul.

The following day, the warship entered the Mediterranean proper and began operations as a unit of the screen for the aircraft carrier USS Independence.

She ranged the length and breadth of the "middle sea", making port visits and performing the usual training missions.

The warship reentered her home port on 19 March and, after about a month of post-deployment stand-down for leave and upkeep, she resumed normal 2nd Fleet operations.

On 14 August, she departed Charleston to participate in UNITAS XVI, a series of multinational exercises conducted annually with units of various Latin American navies.

That assignment - broken only by her participation in the International Naval Review held at New York on Independence Day - continued through the summer of 1976.

She received further combat systems updates in 1979-80, operated with the 6th Fleet and visited Northern European waters in 1981, and took part in Lebanon Crisis actions in 1982, including providing gunfire support for U.S. Marines at Beirut.

William V. Pratt's final overseas tour was an important one, involving participation in the short, but intense Gulf War that drove Iraq out of Kuwait during the first months of 1991.