One of her early missions was a trip to Reval, conveying Leonid Krasin and Viktor Nogin back to the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic, following the first stage of negotiations in the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement.

[1] Vimiera was chosen for conversion to an escort destroyer (WAIR) with an enhanced anti-aircraft and anti-submarine capability as part of the naval rearmament programme preceding the outbreak of war in September 1939.

Conversion was complete, whereon in January 1940 she joined the Nore Command for coastal convoy escort duty in the North Sea and English Channel.

On 19 May she rescued survivors from HMS Whitley and in the following days she assisted both in taking reinforcements to Boulogne and in evacuating wounded soldiers and medical staff.

Vimiera, under the command of Lieutenant-Commander Angus Alexander Mackenzie, RNR, was sunk by a mine in the Thames estuary off East Spile Buoy, near the Isle of Sheppey on 9 January 1942 with the loss of around 96 hands.