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New Mexico was 624 feet (190 m) long overall, displaced 33,000 long tons (33,530 t) at full combat load and generating a top speed of 21 knots (39 km/h; 24 mph). Her crew numbered 1,084 officers and enlisted men. As built, she was fitted with two lattice masts with spotting tops for the main gun battery. The ship was armed with a main battery of twelve 14-inch (356 mm)/50 caliber guns in four, three-gun turrets on the centerline, these mounts were true three-gun barrels, in that each barrel could elevate independently. The secondary battery consisted of fourteen 5-inch (127 mm)/51 caliber guns mounted in individual casemates clustered in the superstructure amidships. Initially, the ship was fitted with twenty-two of the guns, but experiences in the North Sea during World War I demonstrated that the additional guns, which were placed in the hull, would have been unusable in anything but calm seas. As a result, these guns were removed and the casemates were plated over to prevent flooding. After her training exercises in the Atlantic and the Pacific were finished, New Mexico was overhauled and modernized at the Philadelphia Harbor by the Navy from March 1931 to January 1933. During an overhaul in May 1942, at the Puget Sound Navy Yard, she had her remaining secondary battery of twelve 5–inch/51 guns removed to make space for more anti-aircraft guns.