page_title: Greek battleship Kilkis
section_title: 1911–1914
hierarchical_section_title: Greek battleship Kilkis / Service history / United States career / 1911–1914
caption_attribution_description: English: The United States battleship USS&#160;Mississippi&#160;(BB-23), view on the ship's afterdeck, while she was carrying the Navy's first combat air group to Vera Cruz, Mexico, in April 1914. Planes visible include a Curtiss AB type flying boat (on deck at left), and a Curtiss AH type floatplane (atop the after 12/45 gun turret). Note boom rigged to the battleship's superstructure, at left, for hoisting the planes on and off the ship.
context_page_description: Mississippi was the lead ship of the Mississippi class originally built by the US Navy in 1904–1908. The class was built to a design smaller than other American battleships as the result of a limit on displacement imposed by Congress as part of an effort to constrain costs. The ships were armed with a main battery of four 12 in, the standard for pre-dreadnought battleships of the time, but to secure that heavy primary armament, significant compromises in speed, secondary batteries, and armor protection were necessary to keep the ship within the prescribed displacement limit.
  Mississippi served with the Atlantic Fleet from 1909 to 1912, which consisted primarily of routine training operations. In 1910, she and other ships of the fleet visited Europe and in 1912, she carried marines to Cuba during civil unrest in the country. Too slow to operate effectively with the fleet, she was placed in reserve in 1912. Mississippi was reactivated in January 1914 for use as an aviation support ship assigned to the Naval Air Station Pensacola, and she supported flying boats during the occupation of Veracruz, Mexico in April 1914.
context_section_description: On 13 January 1911, Mississippi arrived in Guantanamo Bay, and she spent the following two months conducting various maneuvers with the Atlantic Fleet. She left the area on 13 March and arrived in Hampton Roads four days later. Further training followed over the next month, after which she returned to Philadelphia for periodic maintenance that lasted from 12 April to 1 May. She thereafter cruised the east coast of the US in company with the other ships of the division and into the Gulf of Mexico, proceeding as far as Galveston, Texas. Mississippi embarked a group from the New York Naval Militia for a training cruise that lasted from 13 to 22 July, and in August took part in maneuvers with torpedo boats off the coast of Massachusetts. She returned to Hampton Roads on 24 August to meet the rest of the fleet for shooting practice. She participated in a naval review for President William Howard Taft in the North River on 1 November.
  The ship then returned to Hampton Roads for training with the Second Squadron before stopping in Newport News, Virginia on 24 November. Another period of repair work at Philadelphia followed from 8 December to 16 March 1912, when she departed to rejoin the fleet off Hampton Roads. She took part in a variety of training exercises through 22 April, when she was detached from the fleet for cruising trials off Provincetown, Massachusetts. Her squadron joined her there on 15 May for exercises that began five days later. On 26 May, Mississippi, seven other battleships, and the armored cruiser Washington, embarked a contingent of marines from the 2nd Marine Regiment and carried them to Cuba, where they assisted the Cuban government in suppressing the Negro Rebellion. The fleet arrived on 19 June, disembarked the marines, and then remained in Guantanamo Bay until conditions in the country improved, allowing the fleet to leave for training. Fleet and division maneuvers began on 10 July off the coast of Rhode Island and Connecticut and on 1 August, Mississippi went to Philadelphia, where she was placed in reserve.
  She remained in the Atlantic Reserve Fleet until 30 December 1913, when she was sent to Pensacola, Florida for use as a support ship for the creation of the Naval Air Station Pensacola. She took on a group of nine officers and twenty-three enlisted men along with aircraft and other equipment. She arrived there on 20 January 1914, where the men set about establishing the base. In April, Mississippi received orders to carry a 500-man detachment from the 2nd Marines, who had by then transferred to Pensacola, to Tampico, Mexico after the Tampico Affair that saw a minor confrontation between Mexican soldiers and USN sailors. She also carried a pair of seaplanes and supporting equipment. The ship got underway for Veracruz, Mexico on 21 April, arriving there four days later. On 26 April, she transferred both seaplanes to shore, along with their ground crews and other equipment. The aircraft operated under command of Patrick N. L. Bellinger in the area for a month and a half during the occupation of Veracruz, conducting reconnaissance and searching the surrounding sea for naval mines, supported by men from Mississippi. In late May, the ship departed for Pensacola, where she remained until 28 June, thereafter steaming north for Hampton Roads.
  Greece became engaged in a naval arms race with the Ottoman Empire in the early 1910s; in 1910 the Ottomans had purchased a pair of German pre-dreadnoughts (renamed Barbaros Hayreddin and Turgut Reis) and ordered dreadnought battleships from Britain in 1911 and 1914. The Royal Hellenic Navy ordered the dreadnought Salamis from Germany in 1913 and the dreadnought Basileus Konstantinos from France in response. As a stop-gap measure, the Greeks purchased Mississippi and Idaho from the US Navy. The Greek government bought the ships through an intermediary, the shipbuilder Fred Gauntlett, who acquired them on 8 July and handed them over to Greece. Two days later, Mississippi and Idaho were taken to Newport News and were decommissioned and transferred to the Greek Navy on 
caption: Mississippi's quarterdeck, showing a Curtiss AB flying boat aboard the ship
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