Throughout the 1930s, both ships took part in regular fleet exercises. Subsequently, both Arizona and its sistership were transferred to the Pacific Fleet, undergoing substantial modernization in 1929 through 1931.

Due to oil shortages in Europe at the time, the ship didn’t take part in hostilities during WWI, but instead escorted the American president Woodrow Wilson on his trip to Brest for the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 along with other warships.

USS Arizona was laid down in March 1914, launched in June 1915 and commissioned in October 1916. Nonetheless, the class was approved for construction, with USS Pennsylvania being ordered in August 1912 while its sistership USS Arizona followed suit in March 1913. The decision to order the design into construction was met with some political opposition over concerns that the design was too weak and expensive. In April 1912, the final design of what was to become the Pennsylvania class was chosen with further work on refining the design continuing until September. As such, the Bureau for Construction & Repair came up with a number of design sketches to satisfy the Navy’s requirement.

After the design of the preceding Nevada-class battleships that employed the novel ‘all or nothing’ armor scheme, the Navy sought a slightly larger, improved design to be ordered for construction in the fiscal year of 1913.

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