Wright departed Philadelphia on 18 March 1947 and stopped briefly at Norfolk, Virginia, en route to the Naval Air Training Base at Pensacola, Florida.

On 3 September 1947, Wright embarked 48 Midshipmen for temporary training duty and later welcomed 62 Army officers when she stood out to sea on 15 October, in company with Forrest Royal to let her guests observe flight operations in the Pensacola area.

Wright spent the year 1948 engaged in those pilot carrier qualification operations, before she put into the Norfolk Naval Shipyard on 26 January 1949, to commence a four-month overhaul.

She also visited New York City before taking up a steady schedule of carrier qualifications, air defense tactics, and exercises out of Quonset Point, Rhode Island, Key West, and Pensacola.

The carrier later entered the Norfolk Naval Shipyard and underwent an overhaul there before she took part in Atlantic Fleet maneuvers out of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; engaged in ASW tactics and carrier operations in Narragansett Bay, received further repairs at the Boston Naval Shipyard, and participated in a convoy exercise that ran from 25 February to 21 March 1952; and ranged from Newport to waters of the Panama Canal Zone and Trinidad in the British West Indies.

On that day, she set course from Quonset Point and later rendezvoused with Vice Admiral Felix Stump's 2d Task Fleet en route to northern Europe for combined defense exercises and maneuvers with naval units of other North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) navies.

En route, Wright, escorted by Forrest Royal, was detached to ferry men and gear of Marine Night Fighter Squadron (VMF(N)) 114 to Port Lyautey, Morocco, an operation she completed on 4 September.

Next, after departing Quonset Point, Rhode Island, on 5 April, Wright sailed for Norfolk, Virginia where she took on necessary stores and supplies in preparation for her transfer to the Pacific Fleet.

On 20 April, Wright set sail for the Western Pacific via the Panama Canal; San Diego, California; and Pearl Harbor—and reached United States Fleet Activities Yokosuka, Japan, on 28 May.

Returning to the West Coast on 20 May, Wright subsequently cruised to Pearl Harbor briefly before she entered the Mare Island Naval Shipyard on 14 July to commence preparation for inactivation.

John L. Arrington II, in command, Wright (CC-2) operated locally on trials and training evolutions in the waters off the Pacific Northwest until 3 September, when she departed Seattle and proceeded to San Diego, which she reached three days later.

She departed Seattle on 26 November, stopped briefly at San Diego three days later to embark civilian engineers and personnel who were to conduct surveys of communications and-air conditioning equipment, and was steaming south off the coast of northern Mexico when she picked up a distress message from the Israeli merchantman SS Velos, on 1 December.

She operated primarily off the Virginia Capes, but ranged as far north as Bar Harbor, Maine, and as far south as Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Punta del Este, Uruguay.

From 11 to 14 April 1967, Wright lay at anchor off the coast of Uruguay, providing a worldwide communications capability in support of President Lyndon B. Johnson as he attended the Latin American summit conference at Punta del Este.