The Virginia class battleship was designed to be the first truly seagoing U.S. battleships. Five ships were commissioned between 1906 and 1907. The ships participated in the round-the-world cruise of the Great White Fleet. For the second and last time, the U.S. Navy experimented with mounting the 8" intermediate battery atop the 12" primary guns (half of the intermediate battery this time, the other half were in conventional turrets). As with the previous experiment in doing so (the Kearsarge class), this severely impaired the utility of the 8" guns so mounted. This was the first American capital ship class to use Krupp armor, years after European contemporaries.