History
Despite the class name, Arkansas preceded Wyoming both in construction and commissioning, although both were commissioned during September 1912. As the class was fitted with coal-fired boilers, both Wyoming and Arkansas were able to operate with the British Grand Fleet in the then-oil-deprived North Sea during World War I. Before the war, they served in the Atlantic Fleet and afterwards in both the Atlantic and Pacific, with modernization following in 1925-27. Both ships served in both world wars, and like many older American ships were quickly retired at the end of the second. Wyoming marked the end of the class' nearly 35 years of service when decommissioned 1 August 1947 for scrapping. Arkansas had already been sunk during nuclear testing in the Pacific.
Read more about this topic: Wyoming Class Battleship
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—David Hume (1711–1776)
“For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)