USS "West Virginia" (BB-48) was the fourth dreadnought battleship of the , though because was cancelled, she was the third and final member of the class to be completed. The "Colorado" class proved to be the culmination of the standard-type battleship series built for the United States Navy in the 1910s and 1920s; the ships were essentially repeats of the earlier design, but with a significantly more powerful main battery of eight guns in twin-gun turrets. "West Virginia" was built between her keel laying in 1920 and her commissioning into the Navy in 1923. The ship spent the 1920s and 1930s conducting routine training exercises, including the typically-annual Fleet Problems, which provided invaluable experience for the coming war in the Pacific.