Steaming via the Panama Canal, Pearl Harbor, Midway, and Sasebo, Japan, the destroyer subsequently joined Task Force (TF) 77 in Korean waters and conducted her first shore bombardment mission on 7 February, shelling North Korean rail lines along the coast. Bombardment and escort missions kept the ship continuously occupied until 13 June, when she began her voyage to the United States, steaming via the Indian Ocean, the Suez Canal, the Mediterranean Sea, and the North Atlantic. "William R. Rush" completed her circumnavigation of the globe when she returned to Newport on 8 August 1951. She spent the rest of 1951 on maneuvers and exercises from her home port before she entered the Boston Naval Shipyard at the end of the year for conversion to a radar picket ship. The ensuing refit—during which she was decommissioned on 21 December 1951—entailed replacing the ship's 40 mm Bofors batteries with rapid-fire 3 inch mounts; removing her torpedo tubes; and receiving improved electronic and radar equipment to enable the ship to perform her new picket role, itself an outgrowth of World War II experience with kamikazes in the Pacific. Reclassified to DDR-714 on 18 July 1952, "William R. Rush" was recommissioned on 3 September 1952, Comdr. N. B. Macintosh in command. Returning to Newport from her shakedown cruise as a DDR soon thereafter, "William R. Rush" underwent refresher training in Guantanamo Bay before she called at Mobile Bay, Alabama, for the 1953 Mardi Gras festivities. "William R. Rush" conducted her second 6th Fleet deployment from April to October and then operated locally out of Newport. She performed varying duties into the summer of the following year, carrying out, in succession: antisubmarine warfare (ASW) exercises; plane-guard duties with carriers; and a tour as engineering school ship for the Atlantic Fleet Destroyer Force. She next embarked 66 NROTC midshipmen and sailed for the British Isles, touching at Irish and British ports before she returned to Guantanamo Bay for training. Disembarking the midshipmen at Norfolk on 3 September 1954, "William R. Rush" soon thereafter shifted to Boston, Massachusetts for a three-month overhaul. Over the next decade, from 1954 to 1964, "William R. Rush" was deployed to the Mediterranean, for tours of duty with the 6th Fleet, on eight occasions, touching at ports that ranged from Gibraltar to Beirut, Lebanon, and including Pollensa Bay and Palma, Majorca; Naples and Livorno, Italy; Athens and Salonika, Greece; Golfe Juan, France; Barcelona and Rota, Spain.