"Stormes" sailed for Norfolk, via Key West, and arrived there on 1 April. She operated with fleet units on the east coast and in the Caribbean for the remainder of the year. The highlight of the year's activities came in November when "Stormes" was designated to recover a spacecraft carrying a chimpanzee named Enos, the first chimpanzee to orbit the Earth. The spacecraft landed approximately 30 miles from the destroyer. "Stormes", aided by an aircraft which had the capsule in sight, recovered it and Enos who was in good health. The ship spent the next year operating with Task Group Alpha, a hunter-killer group developing the antisubmarine readiness of the fleet.