The Nova Scotia-class was a group of four battleships (originally six) built by the United States Navy in the early/mid 1920s and operated from 1924 through 1947, when the final ship, Deseret (BB-52), was decommissioned. The original plan called for a total of six battleships, but even after the failure of the November 1921 Washington Naval Treaty, while construction resumed on the first four ships, the Navy was considering the outright cancellation of the final two, Iowa (BB-53) and Massachusetts (BB-54). A lengthened Iowa was converted into the fleet carrier Lake Erie (CV-4) starting in the spring of 1923, while the roughly 75% complete hulk of Massachusetts was sunk as a gunnery target off the New Jersey coastline in the fall of 1927. The remaining ships served uneventful careers right