Editing Tennessee-class battleship (section)

===Prewar careers and Pearl Harbor===
[[File:USS California (BB-44) - NH 82114.jpg|left|thumb|''California'' steaming at high speed, 1921]]

''Tennessee'' and ''California'' served in the [[United States Pacific Fleet|Pacific Fleet]], later renamed the [[Battle Fleet]] in 1922 and then the Battle Force in 1931, in the Pacific Ocean for duration of their peacetime careers, with ''California'' serving as the fleet [[flagship]]. She spent the 1920s and 1930s participating in routine fleet training exercises, including the annual [[Fleet Problem]]s, and cruises around the Americas and further abroad, such as a goodwill visit to Australia and New Zealand in 1925. The fleet problems conducted in the 1920s and 1930s provided the basis for the US Navy's operations in the [[Pacific War]], and experience that demonstrated that the standard type battleships were too slow to operate with [[aircraft carrier]]s led to the development of the [[fast battleship]]s built in the 1930s. Joint training with the [[United States Marine Corps|Marine Corps]] provided experience that proved to be useful during the [[island hopping campaign]] during the Pacific War. In November 1924, Lieutenant [[Dixie Kiefer]] took off from ''California'', the first night aircraft launch in history. While in [[Long Beach, California]], the ships sent crewmen ashore to assist with relief after the [[1933 Long Beach earthquake]].{{sfn|Evans}}{{sfn|DANFS ''Tennessee''}}

During a period of rising tensions with [[Empire of Japan|Japan]] over the [[Second Sino-Japanese War]] in 1940, President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] ordered the Battle Force to relocate from its homeport in [[San Pedro, California]], to [[Pearl Harbor]] in [[Territory of Hawaii|Hawaii]] in an effort to deter further aggression. Modernization work for the ships that was scheduled for 1940 and 1941 was cancelled, as was the fleet problem for 1941, as the situation with Japan was approaching a crisis and the Navy determined that the fleet needed to be maintained at a high state of readiness. Nevertheless, when the Japanese attacked the fleet at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, they did so having achieved complete surprise. Totally unprepared for the surprise attack, both ships were anchored in [[Battleship Row]], where ''California'' was sunk in shallow water. ''Tennessee'', moored inboard of the battleship {{USS|West Virginia|BB-48|2}} and thus protected from torpedo attacks, emerged relatively undamaged, though fires from other ships had warped some of her hull plates and necessitated repairs. She was also trapped when ''West Virginia'' sank and came to rest up against ''Tennessee'', forcing her up against the concrete [[quay]].{{sfn|Cracknell|p=201}}{{sfn|Evans}}{{sfn|DANFS ''Tennessee''}}