[3] As some of the Royal Navy's most modern and powerful escort ships, the Tribal class served with distinction in nearly all theatres of World War II.

[1] This design envisioned a 1,850-ton ship with a speed of 36.25 knots (67.14 km/h; 41.72 mph), an endurance of 5,500 nautical miles (10,200 km; 6,300 mi), and five twin 4.7 inch guns as main armament.

These ships introduced the Fuze Keeping Clock High Angle Fire Control Computer, which was used on all subsequent British wartime destroyers.

The Royal Navy equipped the Tribal class with a comparatively heavy anti-aircraft armament; all eight 4.7in guns could engage aircraft with predicted fire using the FKC computer, and thus provide a powerful augmentation to the battle-fleet's AA defence.

[2] Furthermore, the class initially had problems with leaks in feedwater tanks; this was traced to issues with the turbine blades caused by structural stress when steaming at high speed in rough weather.

[17] Financial restrictions meant that the third Australian Tribal, Bataan, was not modernised, and a combination of manpower shortages and rapid obsolescence saw all three ships decommissioned by the end of the 1950s.

[22] In May 1941, Somali, Bedouin, and Eskimo, along with the N-class destroyer HMAS Nestor, and Royal Navy cruisers Edinburgh, Manchester, and Birmingham boarded the German weather ship München, retrieving vital Enigma cypher codebooks.

[28] In 1942, Matabele was torpedoed and sunk by U-454 in the Barents Sea and Maori was hit in the engine room by a bomb whilst lying in Grand Harbour, Valletta, in February, catching fire and later blowing up where she lay.

[26][29] Punjabi was accidentally rammed and sunk by the battleship King George V in May, whilst performing close escort in thick weather.

[30] In June, Bedouin was disabled in action with Regia Marina's cruisers Raimondo Montecuccoli and Eugenio di Savoia during Operation Harpoon.

In 1943, the four remaining British Tribals (Ashanti, Eskimo, Tartar, and Nubian) participated in Operation Retribution to prevent the Afrika Korps from being evacuated to Italy.

Ashanti and Athabaskan then covered Arctic convoy RA 55A, which was involved in the Battle of North Cape, where the German battleship Scharnhorst was sunk.

[32] The Canadian Tribals were also heavily engaged; Athabaskan was hit by German glide bombs while conducting operations in the Bay of Biscay and was put out of action for almost three months,[33] while Haida and Huron escorted the various Arctic convoys.

[34][35] Eskimo, Ashanti, Athabaskan, Haida, Huron, Nubian, Tartar and later Iroquois saw extensive action in the English Channel before and after Operation Overlord, sinking or damaging a variety of enemy ships.

[37] After the Normandy invasion, Nubian was sent to screen Royal Navy Home Fleet units engaged in the protection of the Russian Convoy JW 59, and carrier-based aerial attacks on the German battleship Tirpitz and elsewhere in Norway.

[39] Iroquois then escorted the liner RMS Queen Mary which was carrying the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to the Second Quebec Conference.

[39] Eskimo, Nubian, and Tartar were given some minor tropicalisation refits and were sent east to join the British Eastern Fleet in the Indian Ocean as the Atlantic war wound down.

[36][38] During this period, the Canadian Tribals continued to be engaged; Haida, Huron and Iroquois escorted Russian convoys until May 1945, when Germany surrendered.

The surviving four British destroyers were paid off and sold for scrap during 1948 and 1949, while the Australian and Canadian Tribals were refitted and modernised for post-war service.

The Australian and Canadian ships, with the exception of Micmac, served during the Korean War, with Bataan at one point escorting a United States aircraft carrier with the same name.

The bow of HMS Maori, sunk on 12 February 1942 by German aircraft, rests 13 m (43 ft) below sea level in Valletta's Marsamxett Harbour, Malta, and is a popular scuba diving site.