USS Arizona (BB-39) - 1920s

1920s

Arizona sailed from New York for Hampton Roads, where she arrived on 22 January, and she continued south to Guantanamo Bay not long after, arriving on 8 February. The time in Caribbean waters was mostly used in training for battles and fleet maneuvering, although it included a liberty visit to Port of Spain. 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. While the ship was awaiting Wilson's departure, she was redeployed to Smyrna (now Izmir) in Turkey in response to tensions between Greece and Italy over the awarding of Smyrna to Greece in the Paris Peace Treaty. The Greek and Italian governments had each deployed a major warship to the area (Georgios Averof and Caio Duilio, respectively) to enforce their interests. Shortly after Arizona arrived, Greek ground forces arrived in transports and were off-loaded in the port. The resultant chaos in the city caused many American citizens in the area to seek shelter on board Arizona.

When the crisis abated, Arizona was ordered to Constantinople (now Istanbul) before she sailed for home on 15 June. She put into the New York Navy Yard on 30 June for an overhaul, where six 5-inch guns were removed and the fire control system was modernized. Work was completed in January 1920 and the battleship sailed south to Guantanamo Bay for crew training. During this time, Arizona was fitted with a flying-off platform similar to the one given to Texas in March 1919. In April, Arizona lost the Battenberg Cup to Nevada, and in June she was present for the Naval Academy's graduation ceremonies. In August she became the flagship of Battleship Division Seven, although it was only later in 1920 that the battleship was refitted to be an admiral's flagship.

In company with six battleships and eighteen destroyers, Arizona was sent south again to transit the Panama Canal in January 1921. After meeting up with the Pacific Fleet, Arizona continued on to Peru for a week before the two fleets combined to practice battle maneuvers. After a short return to the Atlantic, which included an overhaul in New York, Arizona returned to Peru in the summer before she began operating from her new home port of San Pedro, California, part of Los Angeles, where she was based until 1940.

For the rest of the 1920s, Arizona's service consisted of routine training exercises. Naval historian Paul Stillwell remarked that "the Pacific years included a great deal of sameness and repetition", and his chronology of the ship's movements is filled with phrases like "torpedo-defense practice", "battle-practice rehearsal", "gunnery practice", "en route to ...", and "anchored at ...". A recurring theme in these years were the annual Fleet Problems, which began in 1923 and simulated large fleet actions by having most of the active fleet face off against each other. The first two simulated an attack on the Panama Canal from the west, while in 1925 they attempted to defend the Hawaiian Islands. Other 1920s Fleet Problems included the Caribbean, near Central America, the West Indies, and Hawaii. On 27 July 1923 the ship joined President Warren G. Harding's naval review in Seattle. Harding died just one week later, and Arizona joined the Pacific Fleet to fire a salute in his honor on 3 August.