On July 1, 1937, the U.S. Navy ordered two revolutionary warships that would reshape naval warfare: the USS North Carolina from the New York Naval Shipyard and the USS Washington from Philadelphia. These sister ships represented a dramatic departure from decades of battleship design. Rather than the slow, heavily armored dreadnoughts that had dominated fleets since World War I, the North Carolina class emphasized speed without sacrificing firepower or protection. The design achieved a top speed of 27 knots, making these vessels capable of escorting aircraft carriers and executing tactical maneuvers impossible for their predecessors. At over 35,000 tons and armed with nine 16-inch guns, they were formidable combatants that could both slug it out in a battleline and keep pace with faster carrier task forces.

The concept of the fast battleship emerged from evolving naval strategy and the limitations of older designs. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, naval architects and strategists recognized that the battleship's role was changing. The rise of aircraft carriers as the dominant capital ship meant battleships needed flexibility they had never required before. Traditional slow battleships, designed primarily to bombard enemy battleships from great distances, could no longer fulfill the Navy's needs alone. Officers argued that faster battleships could provide the heavy guns and armor protection that carriers lacked in direct combat, while maintaining the speed to stay with carrier task forces. International treaty restrictions on battleship displacement, which capped new ships at 35,000 tons under the Second London Naval Treaty, forced designers to make every ounce count.

The North Carolina class battleships took nearly three years to construct after their July 1937 orders. The North Carolina was launched in June 1940 and commissioned in April 1941, while the Washington followed in June 1941. Both ships saw extensive service during the Pacific War, proving the fast battleship concept's worth. The North Carolina participated in major carrier battles and surface actions, while the Washington earned fame for her night engagement at Guadalcanal in November 1942, sinking the Japanese battleship Kirishima. These two ships spawned three follow-on classes during the war years, making the fast battleship design the standard for American capital ships through the 1950s. The orders placed on this single July day set the template for one of the Navy's most important warship types and demonstrated how rapidly naval warfare was transforming on the eve of World War II.