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Here at LSOZI, we take a break every Wednesday to explore the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period, profiling a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

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Warship Wednesday 10 December 2025: Dutch Avenger

Above we see the kanonneerboot (gunboat) Hr.Ms. Van Kinsbergen (U 93) arriving at Willemstad, Curaçao, Dutch Antilles, on Halloween 1939, complete with a large Dutch flag painted amidships as a mark of neutrality. While she arrived to be a station ship in a neutral country’s overseas territory during the first months of WWII, she would go on to put on war paint and go looking for some payback after her homeland was invaded and occupied a few months later.

She would help stop a large German freighter some 85 years ago this week– one of many Axis ships “The Flying Dutchman” would bag.

The need for a gunnery school ship

Our subject was ordered as an artillerie-instructieschip, a vehicle to train the Dutch Navy’s gunners and new gunnery officers in preparation for a series of modern warships, most of which were never constructed before the war began. She was badly needed to replace the very old (laid down in 1897) Holland-class pantser-dekschepen (protected cruiser) Hr.Ms. Gelderland, which had been taken out of front-line service in 1919 and had been working as an artillery training ship ever since.

With a full displacement of just 2,388 tons and a 322-foot length, Van Kinsbergen was rightfully a sloop or frigate. Using two sets of Werkspoor geared steam turbines driven by two Yarrow boilers, she could make 25.5 knots on 17,000shp. Range was 5,790nm at 14.5 knots on 696 tons of oil. Armor was slight, just a half-inch belt, an inch shield on the main guns, a 20mm protected deck over machinery spaces, and 20mm on the conning tower.

Her primary armament was four single 12 cm/45 (4.7″) Wilton-Fijenoord Nr. 6 guns in half-shielded (open back) mounts. A dual-purpose gun derived from earlier Bofors SP designs with a 55-degree elevation, they had a rate of fire of 10 rounds per minute and a range of 17,500 yards.

The Dutch aimed to use the same gun on new minelayers (Hr.Ms.Willem van der Zaan (ML-2), the four Tjerk Hiddes/Gerard Callenburgh-class destroyers, seven 1,400-ton 1938 pattern K-class gunboats, and as the secondary battery of a trio of planned 30,000-ton Design 1047 battlecruisers (which were very similar to the German Scharnhorst).

Van Kinsbergen was also given a large and very advanced (for its time) Hazemeyer Signaalapparatenfabriek HSLG-4 fire control device that could be used to direct both her main and secondary armament. Speaking to the latter, she carried two twin 40/56 Bofors Nr.3 guns on advanced triaxial stabilized mounts, one of the first mountings of what would go on to be one of the main Allied AAA mounts of WWII.

The Hazemeyer device was used on both the 4.7-inch guns and 40mm Bofors of the Navy’s late model cruisers, such as De Reuter, and 48 land-based 75mm/43 Vickers Model 1931 AAA guns in service with the K.Lu A.

Most of the Hazemeyer-equipped 7,5 cm Vickers operated by the K.Lu.A were in storage at Artillerie Inrichtingen Hembrug, recently arrived from Britain and waiting to be assembled when the Germans invaded Holland in May 1940.

She was also fitted in 1939 with four .50 caliber machineguns, and two depth charge racks. Most sources also list her with a pair of 3″/52 SA Nr.2 mounts, at least one of which would be mounted ashore to defend Curacao later in the war.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Meet Van Kinsbergen

Our subject was named in honor of VADM (Count) Jan Hendrik van Kinsbergen, who famously beat the Turks several times while in Tsarist service (the Russian Imperial Navy named destroyers after him), in addition to his multiple feats in Dutch service.

Laid down by Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij, at Rotterdam, Netherlands on 11 September 1937, she launched on 5 January 1939– christened by Mrs. A. van Dijk-Wierda, wife of the then Minister of Defense Jannes van Dijk– and commissioned on 21 August 1939– less than a fortnight before the start of WWII in Europe.

The same day Van Kinsbergen entered service, the ancient cruiser Gelderland was laid up, and many of the new ship’s crew came from the vessel she replaced, including her skipper, Kapitein-Luitenant ter Zee (CDR) John Louis Karel Hoeke, RNN, a Java-born regular who had earned his commission in 1915.

War!

With the Germans marching into Poland and the lights going out across Europe once again for the second time in 25 years, Van Kinsbergen’s planned career as a training vessel was put on hold as her North Sea stomping grounds were now a war zone.

Instead, it was decided she would be of better use in reinforcing the neutrality of the isolated overseas garrison in the wind-swept Dutch West Indies, a move which also put her within an easy cruising distance of the crown’s Suriname colony. In this, she relived the 1,800-ton sloop Hr.Ms. Johan Maurits van Nassau— just in time for the latter to return home to be sunk by the Luftwaffe the next year.

On 2 October, after a visit from Queen Wilhemena herself, Van Kinsbergen left Den Helder, escorting the submarines Hr.Ms. O 15 and O 20, on a slow crossing to Curacao via the Azores and Puerto Rico that ended on Halloween. While O 15 would remain in the West Indies for a year, the ill-fated O 20 would continue through the Panama Canal to serve in the Dutch East Indies, where she was sunk by a trio of Japanese destroyers in December 1941.

When the Germans rudely violated Dutch neutrality on 10 May 1940– even while the country hosted the exiled former German Kaiser– war came to both metropolitan Holland and her overseas colonies.

In the Dutch West Indies, Van Kinsbergen and her crew clocked in with local authorities, including a company of Marines and the 1-pounder armed local coastguard vessels HM Aruba and HM Practico, then moved to seize seven German merchant ships that were interned in the islands. These included the SS Este (7915 gt), SS Vancouver (8269 gt), MS Henry Horn (3164 gt), MS Patricia (3979 gt), MS Frisia (561 gt), MS Karibia (428 gt), and ES Alemania (1380 gt).

While the German crews– confined to their ships since the invasion of Denmark in April– tried, only one of these seven, the HAPAG turboship Almania, managed to successfully scuttle. The other six were soon in Allied service under new names for the duration, while 220 German nationals (215 men from the seven ships and five German sailors turned over by Dutch steamers) were locked up in an internment camp on Bonaire until the British could pick them up later in the summer.

Of these seized vessels, Este, renamed Suriname, was torpedoed and sunk by U-558 off Venezuela in September 1942 with the loss of 13 crew. Most of the others, including Vancouver (renamed Curacao), Henry Horn (renamed Bonaire), and Patricia (renamed Arbua), survived the war and were given to Dutch shipping firms post-war as reparations, sailing well into the 1950s.

Soon after the seizure of the German ships, the French dispatched 150 colonial troops from Senegal to help garrison out lying Aruba but then, when France fell the next month and dropped out of the war, Van Kinsbergen stood by the tense scene in early July as the Vichy French armed merchant cruiser Esterel (X21) reembarked the Tirailleurs Sénégalais to return them to Africa.

The 40mm story

On 20 August 1940, Van Kinsbergen would find herself steaming with the heavy cruiser USS Tuscaloosa (CA-37) north of Trinidad, with the latter’s gunnery officers very interested in the Dutch ship’s 40mm Bofors mounts, which they saw in action against towed target kites. The performance reportedly convinced them to help push to adopt the gun as the U.S. Navy standard, with BuOrd formally obtaining Swedish licenses in June 1941.

The first U.S. ship to get 40mm Bofors was the gunnery training ship USS Wyoming (AG-17), which received a quad mount in June 1942; shortly after, the destroyer USS Coghlan (DD-606) became the first combat ship fitted with a twin mount in July.

Over 400 U.S. DDs/DEs would carry the weapon, plus a myriad of cruisers, carriers, battleships, LSTs, you name it. During 1944 alone, U.S. factories produced 6,644 single mountings, and approximately 3,650 twin and 750 quad mountings for the Navy.

The Bofors was credited with more “kills” (742.5) than any other USN AAA platform of the war.

Back to our ship

Van Kinsbergen spent the rest of 1940 operating with British ships in patrols off the coasts of Colombia and Venezuela, looking to intercept German, Italian, and Vichy blockade runners– narrowly missing the Hapag-steamers Helgoland (2947 gt) and Idarwald (5033 gt) as well as the French Charles L.D. (5267 gt).

On 11 December 1940, the German Norddeutscher Lloyd freighter Rhein (6049 gt) was en route from Tampico, Mexico, to Germany with cargo and was followed by several warships in an attempt to apprehend and capture her.

However, during the attempted arrest by the Van Kinsbergen, some 40 miles NW of the Dry Tortugas, the ship was set on fire by the crew in an attempt to scuttle her. Later that day, the burned-out hulk was sunk by 22 rounds of 6-inch cannon fire by the British light cruiser HMS Caradoc. Van Kinsbergen dutifully rounded up the shipwrecked German merchant sailors whose war had come to a close.

In February 1941, Van Kinsbergen, in conjunction with two Canadian corvettes, seized the Danish tankers Scandia (8571 gt) and Christian Holm (9919 gt) at the entrance of the Gulf of Paria, escorting them to Trinidad. These tankers were in Admiralty service within weeks.

On 26 May 1941, just after leaving a much-needed yard period in Bermuda, Van Kinsbergen captured the Vichy French CFN steamer SS Winnipeg (8379 gt) with 732 passengers aboard, including eight Jewish photographers who were saved from internment and persecution in France. Winnipeg would be put into Canadian service and sunk by submarine U-443 while on a convoy run the following October.

Five days after seizing Winnipeg, Van Kinsbergen came across the Vichy-French CGT steamer Arica (5390 gt) and captured the same, escorting her to Trinidad for further Allied service. Like Winnipeg, Arica was soon under the red duster only to be sunk by U-160 off Trinidad in November 1942.

The far-traveled Dutch sloop was directed to Liverpool in July for refit, with 11 captured enemy ships to her credit.

In August 1941, British LT Sidney James Beadell, RNVR, an official war photographer, visited Van Kinsbergen while still in port, and while he dutifully logged several great images that captured a moment in time, he apparently jotted down that she was a cruiser (!) named Van Kingsbergen (sic).

Official wartime period captions, likely by Beadell:

It was while in Britain that Van Kinsbergen changed crews and skippers, with KLtz Cornelis Hellingman, late of the sub tender Hr.Ms. Colombia, changing places with the good KLtz Hoeke. Hellingman had earned both a British DSO and a Dutch Bronzen Kruis for his command of the Ymuiden/Ijmuiden naval sector (the gateway to Amsterdam) on 14/15 May 1940 and his decision to demo the six ships in the harbor and wreck the port facilities there rather than allow them to fall into German hands.

In September 1941, leaving Britain to return to the Caribbean, the now camouflaged Van Kinsbergen carried 60 men from the newly-formed Free Dutch Prinses Irene-Brigade to Paramaribo, Suriname, to beef up the garrison there.

Her first Allied convoy, from 19 to 27 July 1942, was the Curacao/Trinidad-to-Key West TAW.6C in which the Dutch slugger was the main escort, augmented by the plucky little 136-foot minesweeper USS YMC-56 (which had a couple of deck guns but no ASW gear or depth charges). The duo shepherded six merchants (three American, one each Norwegian, British, and Dutch), including the big tankers MT Beacon (10,388 tons, Standard Oil Co.) and the 9,912-ton Nortraship MT Glaron.

Her next convoy was TAW.9, another Trinidad-to-Key West run, from 27 July-4 August, that numbered 10 merchants (again, mostly tankers) and six escorts, the latter including a pair of small (173-foot) U.S. PCs, fresh from the shipyard.

Convoy TAW.14, 15-25 August 1942, teamed up Van Kinsbergen with two PCs and an SC as well as an old American flush-deck tin can (USS Upshur) to run 14 merchants, mainly tankers, to Key West.

Following that, she sailed for Norfolk for modernization. There until late October, she emerged with a Type 271 radar, a Type 128C ASDIC, six 20mm Oerlikons (two twin, two single), eight K-gun DCTs, and racks for 52 depth charges.

In Convoy TAG.20 (11-15 November 1942: Trinidad – Guantanamo) (27 merchants and 10 escorts), Van Kinsbergen joined the “reverse Lend-Leased” American Flower-class corvette USS Spry (PG-64), the old flush-deck tin can USS Biddle (DD-151), the gunboat USS Erie, and a half-dozen PC/SCs.

It was during TAG.20 that on 12 November, Van Kinsbergen rescued survivors of the Erie after the American sloop was torpedoed by U-163 and beached, ablaze.

In Convoy TAG.22   (21-14 November 1942: Trinidad – Guantanamo) 43 merchants and 10 escorts, Van Kinsbergen sailed alongside another American Flower— USS Tenacity (PG-71)— the somewhat infamous flush-decker USS Greer (DD–145), and seven small PCs/SCs, one of which was the mighty Free Dutch Queen Wilhelmina (ex-USS PC 468), later to become nicknamed as the “Queen of the Caribbean” due to her Caribbean beat.

In April 1943, she got a third skipper, KLtz Johannes Jacobus Lukas Willinge, RNN, late of the light cruiser Hr.Ms. Sumatra, and in August would get a fourth, Ktz Jan August Gauw, RNN, who had formerly commanded the minelayer Hr.Ms. Nautilus (M 12) until she was sunk in 1941 after being run down by the British freighter Murrayfield off Grimsby.

By this time, she had added a pair of Mousetrap Mk 20 ASWRLs and upgraded her sensors to an SF radar, a TBS system, and QHB sonar, with the work done in New York.

While operating from New York, she joined the outward bound leg of two very large NYC to Liverpool Atlantic convoys, sailing as part of the escort with a couple of divisions of primarily Canadian corvettes, frigates, and minesweepers.

These included:

• Convoy HX.304 (17-20 August 1944, 87 merchants and 27 escorts)
• Convoy HX.311 (30 September- 3 October 1944, 60 merchants and 25 escorts)

Ordered to England in January 1945, her war was over.

She changed her pennant to N 3 in May and arrived back “home” in Rotterdam in August, entering the RDM dockyard there for service.

Wait, another war?

Able to float in just 10 feet of seawater, Van Kinsbergen was ideal to support operations in the littoral of the 17,000-island Indonesian archipelago, which at the time was fighting to break free from Dutch colonial rule.

With that, she set out for the Pacific on 24 October 1945. No rest for the weary.

And a Cold War

In late 1947, Van Kinsbergen received a further upgrade, swapping out her old 4.7-inch guns for a pair of 2 x 4″/45 SK C/32s, while keeping her Bofors and Oerlikons. Her ASW suite was reduced to two throwers, landing her Mousetraps and stern racks. The sensor fit at the time included the SL-1, SH-1, and Mk 34 radars, as well as her QHB sonar.

Reclassified as a frigate with the pennant number F804 in November 1950, by February 1952, she was deployed once again to the Pacific, remaining in New Guinea until December 1954 and circumnavigating the globe in the process.

By the time she returned to the Netherlands on 5 February 1955, her 16-year career was all but over. She served as an accommodation ship (pennant A 876) in Vlissingen from 1 November 1955 and would continue in that reduced role until 29 May 1959, when she was stricken.

In five years, the Dutch disposed of eight frigates. Flores on 1 May 1955. Soemba in Jan 1956. Jan van Brakel in Aug. 1957. Batjan, Boeroe, and Ceram in 1958. Johan Maurits van Nassau was sold for scrap in January 1960 for 257,650 florins and was broken up at Diemen. Van Speijk was stricken from the active list in 1960.

Van Kinsbergen lingered until 19 February 1974, when she was towed to Fa. Van Heyghen, Ghent, Belgium, for scrapping, her value listed as 515,500 florins.

Epilogue

The “Flying Dutchman’s” myriad of interactions with U.S. Naval forces during WWII, particularly while working under COMCARIBSEAFRON, are cataloged extensively in the National Archives, as are her Bureau of Ships plans and reports from the October-November 1942 refit in Norfolk. Speaking of plans, dozens of pages of her original drawings are digitized online. 

A Den Haag bar, Gastropub Van Kinsbergen, celebrates not only the admiral but also our training ship/gunboat/cruiser, collecting various militaria and relics of her from around the world, including the ship’s crest, salvaged from an antique dealer in Turkey.

As for Van Kinsbergen’s crew, her first skipper, KLtz JLK Hoeke, after a stint in command of the Dutch submarine tender/auxiliary cruiser Colombia (18 Aug 1941-27 Feb. 1943, when she was sunk by U 516 near Simonstown) died in Wallington, England, in March 1944, aged 50, during the “Baby Blitz.” He is buried in Loenen.

Her second wartime skipper, the DSO-wearing KLtz Hellingman, survived the war and retired in December 1945 as a full captain, concluding 30 years of honorable service. The hero of Ijmuiden passed in 1979, aged 85.

Her third and fourth WWII skippers, Willinge and Gauw, would both rise to wear admiral stars post-war and pass in 1989 and 1967, respectively.

The Dutch Navy recycled the name Van Kinsbergen for a Kortenaer-class frigate, F 809, which entered service in 1980, served for 15 years, and is still in the Greek Navy.

Keeping the name alive, the first purpose-built naval training vessel for the Dutch Navy, MOV Van Kinsbergen (A902), entered service in 1999. Built by Damen (who else?) she is a trim little 136-footer that typically ships 16 students of the Dutch Royal Naval College (Koninklijk Instituut voor de Marine) around 200 days each year.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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