carrier and her screen, DesDiv 50, entered Pearl Harbor. During her ten days at Oahu, Waters periodically conducted patrols of the sea approaches to the harbor. Two days before Christmas, she got underway homeward with a task unit built around the cruisers , , and . She escorted the cruisers into San Francisco on 29 December and returned to San Diego on 30 December. 1942 After a month patrolling the California coast, Waters slipped her moorings at San Diego on 31 January 1942 and headed north for duty with the defense forces of the 13th Naval District. She arrived at Bremerton, Washington, on 5 February and, six days later, continued north to Alaska. For the next ten months, the destroyer escorted supply ships from Seattle, Washington, to and between the bases along the Alaskan coast and through the Aleutians chain. She was later assigned to the forces of the Northwestern Sea Frontier as a unit of Task Force 8, the Alaskan defense force. Her mission, however, remained the same as she plied the cold Waters of the northeastern Pacific between such ports as Kodiak, Dutch Harbor, Chernofski, Adak, and Sitka—returning periodically to Seattle. The exigencies of the campaign for Guadalcanal— where neither side enjoyed the overwhelming local naval and air supremacy which insured victory in every other amphibious operation of the war—necessitated an increase in the number of high-speed transports. These hybrid warships combined the functions of transports and of destroyers into one. The concept of the high-speed transport embodied sufficient armament for the ship to defend herself against smaller warships and to support the troops she carried with sufficient speed to enable her to outrun more heavily armed ships. Overage flushdeck destroyers such as Waters were the first ships to be so converted to fill this role. Waters entered the Puget Sound Navy Yard on 19 December 1942 to begin conversion and later that month was redesignated APD-8. During the modifications, her forward boilers were removed to make room for the troops she would carry while her torpedo tubes came off to accommodate landing craft and their davits. Though the ship retained her four-gun main battery configuration, she swapped her obsolete single-purpose guns for more up-to-date dual-purpose guns. Her antiaircraft defenses were further augmented by the addition of several single 20 mm mounts. She completed conversion in February and returned to San Diego on 10 February. 1943 On 17