Until November 1941 "Dragon" served as an escort ship of various convoys in the Atlantic, after which she was moved to Asia. Following commencement of hostilities with Japan in December, she served with the American-British-Dutch-Australian Command forces, escorting convoys to Singapore, HMS Dragon was the last warship to leave Singapore before it surrendered. On 20 January 1942, she was attached to the Western task force operating in the Java Sea, which included HMAS "Hobart", HMS "Danae", HMS "Tenedos" and HMS "Scout". After the fall of Java, she joined and the Dutch cruiser , and operated from Ceylon. In May she was moved to Madagascar. The following month, most of the crew of the ship was landed and moved to other units, while "Dragon" started her voyage back to Britain for refurbishment. Since the rump crew could not operate the ship independently, she had to be attached to various convoys and it took almost half a year before she finally reached Liverpool via Cape Town, Chatham and Durban.