"Perkins" returned to California in October and in January 1948 sailed to the Marshalls for the atomic bomb test series "Operation Sandstone". Overhaul followed her return to San Diego in June and on 4 January 1949 she departed the west coast for another tour off the China coast. Arriving at Tsingtao on 7 February, she was redesignated DDR–877 on 18 February. Scheduled exercises soon began, but, in addition, she was called on to lift foreign residents of Tsingtao to Hong Kong as Communist forces took over the former city in May. In June she battled her first typhoon, and after visiting Singapore in August, she returned to San Diego.