USS Arkansas and Wyoming in Plymouth Sound

The United States Ships (USS) Arkansas and Wyoming were two Wyoming class dreadnought battleships built between 1909 and 1912. In 1906 the British Royal Navy launched HMS Dreadnought, a revolutionary designed ship with heavy guns and steam propulsion. Following the terms of the London Naval Treaty of 1930, the USS Wyoming became a training ship for the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) visiting Europe in 1929-30 and 1934-35 with the USS Arkansas.

The Treaty followed on from the post 1914-18 war Washington Naval Treaty and was signed under the auspices of the precursor to the United Nations, the League of Nations. It was designed to limit a naval arms' race by curbing naval construction. In the 1970s and 1980s arms' reduction agreements like SALT and START targeted weapons' reduction and the nuclear arms' race. Dreadnoughts of the Royal Navy and the German Imperial Navy faced off at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. The USS Texas is the only surviving dreadnought and now a museum battleship in San Jacinto. Wyoming was sold for scrap in 1947 and Arkansas was used for nuclear tests on warships in 1946 and sunk at Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific.