Entering service in 1914, she was part of the U.S. Navy force which was sent to reinforce the British Grand Fleet in the North Sea near the end of World War I.

During that time, she was involved in at least two incidents with German U-boats, and is believed to have been the only US ship to have sunk one in the war, during an accidental collision in October 1918.

Following the war, she was sent on a series of training exercises and cruises in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, and saw several overhauls to increase her armament, aircraft handling and armor.

Returning to Pearl Harbor for repairs until the end of the war, she was classified obsolete and was chosen to take part in the Operation Crossroads nuclear weapon tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946.

[1] She was powered by 14 Babcock & Wilcox boilers driving two dual-acting vertical triple expansion reciprocating steam engines, with 28,000 shp (21,000 kW), with a maximum speed of 21 kn (39 km/h; 24 mph).

[1] Her armament consisted of ten 14-inch/45-caliber guns which could be elevated to 15 degrees, and arrayed in five double mounts designated, from bow to stern, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

[9][11] The fourth New York, an armored cruiser, was renamed Rochester, to free the name for this battleship,[12] and was later scuttled in Subic Bay in 1941.

[1] She was designated flagship for Rear Admiral Frank Friday Fletcher in July 1914, commanding the fleet occupying and blockading Veracruz to prevent arms shipments from arriving there to support the government of Victoriano Huerta.

[11] She also undertook several goodwill duties, and in December 1915 she held a high-profile Christmas party and dinner for several hundred orphans from New York City, at the suggestion of her crew.

[14] On the evening of 14 October 1918, as New York led a group of battleships into the Pentland Firth, she was rocked by a violent underwater collision on her starboard side, followed shortly after by another to the stern that broke off two blades on one of her propellers, reducing the ship to one engine and a speed of 12 kn (14 mph; 22 km/h).

[21] This strange—and accidental—encounter marked the only time in all of Battleship Division Nine's service with the Grand Fleet that one of its ships sank a German vessel.

[22] Postwar examination of German records revealed that the submarine lost may have been UB-113 or UB-123,[22] however, neither of these seem possible, as UB-113 had been sunk by a French gunboat in the Gulf of Gascony weeks prior, and UB-123 sank in the North Sea Mine Barrage five days after the New York suffered the collision.

[citation needed] Badly damaged by the loss of a propeller, the ship sailed to Rosyth under heavy escort for repairs on 15 October.

[21] Unlike in previous cases, sufficient evidence existed to suppose that this torpedo attack was not a false alarm—a number of officers and men aboard New York clearly saw the wakes of the torpedoes in the full moonlight, and a submarine was spotted in the immediate vicinity by a patrol shortly after the attack.

[22] New York was also frequently host to foreign dignitaries, including King George V of the United Kingdom and the future Edward VIII, as well as then-prince Hirohito of the Empire of Japan.

[14] She was on hand for the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet on 21 November 1918 in the Firth of Forth, several days after the signing of the Armistice, after which she returned to the United States briefly.

[24] She then served as an escort for George Washington, carrying President Woodrow Wilson, on his trip from the United States to Brest, France en route to the Versailles Peace Conference.

[24] Arriving back in the United States in 1919, she began to undertake training and patrol duties, including at one point to the Caribbean with a number of other U.S.

[24] In 1926 New York was considered obsolete compared with other battleships in service, so she steamed to Norfolk Navy Yard for a complete refit.

While several other battleships in service, including Utah and Florida were converted to training ships or scrapped, New York and Texas were chosen to be overhauled to increase their speed, armor, armament, and propulsion systems as allowed by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922.

However, these bulges made maneuvering harder at low speeds, she rolled badly, and her gunfire accuracy was reduced in rough seas.

[25] On 4 September 1928, she left for short-range battle drills with Arizona, and from 7 to 10 November the ships traveled to San Francisco together with Pennsylvania.

New York was fitted with XAF radar in February 1938, including the first United States duplexer so a single antenna could both send and receive.

The tests conducted on New York led to similar radars being installed on the Brooklyn-class and St. Louis-class cruisers as well as newer battleship West Virginia.

[29] She was in the midst of a refit on 7 December 1941, when the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor, sinking many of the battleships in the U.S. Pacific Fleet and bringing the United States into World War II.

New York remained on station until the port was secure, then steamed north to support the Center Group off Fedhala and Casablanca, specifically to deal with the threat of the Vichy French battleship Jean Bart, but by the time she arrived, that battleship had been disabled by Massachusetts and other Vichy French ships had been driven off by Brooklyn and Augusta.

[40] Selected to return to action in the Pacific Theater[41] in late 1944, she transited the Panama Canal on 27 November, and arrived in Long Beach, California on 9 December, breaking down at least once along the way and losing an observation plane in bad weather.

New York departed 12 January and rendezvoused with Idaho, Tennessee, Nevada, Texas, and Arkansas, forming a support force for the invasion of Iwo Jima.

New York lost a blade off her port screw just before the invasion began[39] and briefly put in for temporary repairs at Eniwetok from 5 to 7 February.

[39][26] She was subjected to a kamikaze attack on 14 April which destroyed one spotting plane on its catapult, but the Japanese aircraft crashed 50 yd (46 m) from the ship and New York received only superficial damage, suffering two men injured.