Individual Tribal-class destroyers did not all finish at precisely the same displacement. Designers and purchasers worked with margins of error rather than expecting every hull to reproduce a treaty figure exactly. Nominal performance could also conceal reserve capability, as British sloops designed around a lower speed sometimes exceeded it when enough power was applied. One example has a sloop keeping pace with HMS Birmingham during the Sing Tao incident despite a much lower published maximum. Specification tables are therefore useful guides rather than perfectly exact descriptions of operational performance.
Notable Point · 1:09:41-1:10:42
Treaty figures still left real design margins
Declared tonnage and nominal speed were not exact physical ceilings: ships varied within design tolerances and sometimes exceeded their published performance.