After being commissioned in 1916, Arizona remained stateside during World War I but escorted President Woodrow Wilson to the subsequent Paris Peace Conference.

In April 1940, the Pacific Fleet's home port was moved from California to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, as a deterrent to Japanese imperialism.

[6] She was designed to carry enough fuel oil to steam at a speed of 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph) for 8,000 nautical miles (15,000 km; 9,200 mi) with a clean bottom.

[7] Defense against torpedo boats was provided by twenty-two 51-caliber 5-inch (127 mm) guns mounted in individual casemates in the sides of the ship's hull.

Assigned to Battleship Division 8 operating out of the York River,[21][22] Arizona was employed only as a gunnery training ship for the crewmen on armed merchant vessels crossing the Atlantic in convoys.

Four coal-fired American dreadnoughts (it was easier to obtain coal than oil in the United Kingdom) were eventually sent across the Atlantic in December 1917 as Battleship Division Nine, but Arizona was not among them.

[25] The ten battleships departed France the next day,[26] taking less than two weeks to cross the Atlantic, and arrived in New York on 26 December to parades, celebrations, and a full naval review by Secretary Daniels.

[27] Arizona sailed from New York for Hampton Roads on 22 January 1919; she continued south to Guantanamo Bay on 4 February and arrived on four days later.

In April, Arizona's crew won the Battenberg Cup rowing competition for the second straight year before the ship was deployed to France once again to escort President Wilson back to the United States.

[21] Sometime in early March 1924 a prostitute named Madeline Blair stowed away aboard Arizona, trading sex for a free voyage to San Pedro until she was discovered on 12 April while the ship was anchored in Balboa, Panama.

She was sent back to New York City and Captain Percy Olmstead later convened courts-martial for 23 sailors once the ship began her refit in the Bremerton Navy Yard, which imposed sentences of up to 10 years imprisonment.

Admiral William V. Pratt, then in command of the division to which Arizona was assigned, thought the penalties excessive, and he ordered the reprimands stricken from the officer's records when he became Chief of Naval Operations in 1930.

[35] Her deck armor was increased by the addition of a 1.75-inch (44 mm) thickness of Special Treatment Steel, and the ship was bulged to protect her from torpedoes.

At the same stroke, her own outfit of two submerged torpedo tubes was removed during this refit in light of a new appreciation that anticipated battleship engagement ranges made their future use improbable.

Returning on 29 March, Arizona conducted her sea trials at Rockland, Maine, and had another catapult fitted on the top of Turret III, before she was transferred to the West Coast in August with her sister Pennsylvania.

After returning to the West Coast from Fleet Problem XIV in 1933, the ship was anchored in San Pedro when an earthquake struck nearby Long Beach, California, on 10 March.

This took place at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, while the ship was participating in that year's Fleet Problem off the East Coast.

[38] Rear Admiral George T. Pettengill relieved Bryant on 4 March 1935 and the ship participated in Fleet Problem XVI two months later.

At its conclusion, the United States Pacific Fleet was retained in Hawaiian waters, based at Pearl Harbor, to deter the Japanese.

During this refit, the foundation for a search radar was added atop her foremast, her anti-aircraft directors were upgraded and a platform for four water-cooled .50-inch (12.7 mm) caliber M2 Browning machine guns was installed at the very top of the mainmast.

The stern-most bomb ricocheted off the face of Turret IV and penetrated the deck to detonate in the captain's pantry, causing a small fire.

[48][Note 1] The last bomb hit at 08:06 in the vicinity of Turret II, likely penetrating the armored deck near the magazines located in the forward section of the ship.

A 1944 Navy Bureau of Ships report suggests that a hatch leading to the black powder magazine was left open, possibly with flammable materials stocked nearby.

The time elapsed from the bomb hit to the magazine explosion was shorter than experience suggested burning smokeless powder required to explode.

[53] It seems unlikely that a definitive answer to this question will ever be found, as the surviving physical evidence is insufficient to determine the cause of the magazine explosion.

Lieutenant Commander Samuel G. Fuqua, the ship's damage control officer, earned the Medal of Honor for his cool-headedness while quelling fires and getting survivors off the wrecked battleship.

On 7 March 1950, Admiral Arthur W. Radford, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet at that time, instituted the raising of colors over her remains.

A memorial was built across the ship's sunken remains, including a shrine room listing the names of the lost crew members on a marble wall.

[66] In 2004, the US Navy and the National Park Service oversaw a comprehensive computerized mapping of the hull, being careful to honor its role as a war grave.

The three-foot-tall (90 cm) bronze trophy on a black marble base was provided to the Navy by the citizens of the state of Arizona on 7 December 1987.