 On 1 February, the escort destroyer returned to Boston for a seven-week post-shakedown availability.After putting in at Norfolk, Virginia on 24 March, "Basilone" conducted local operations and served as a unit of the Surface Anti-Submarine School at Key West during the rest of 1950 and most of 1951.She spent late November and early December in the West Indies conducting training and then returned to Norfolk where she occupied the rest of the year and the first quarter of 1952 preparing for her first deployment to the Mediterranean.