HNLMS Holland class Destroyers

The Holland-class destroyers were built for the Royal Netherlands Navy in the 1950s. They were the first major warships designed and built by the Dutch after World War II. In contrast to previous Dutch Navy practice, the ships were named after provinces rather than admirals.

The Second World War had a devastating impact on the fleets of the Royal Netherlands Navy, many surface vessels and submarines were destroyed, either in battle or by mines, and some were scuttled to prevent capture by the enemy. The most notable surface vessels that were destroyed during the war were HNLMS Java, Sumatra and De Ruyter. This meant that the Royal Netherlands Navy lost its most of its firepower and was dependent on outdated and less powerful ships such as the light cruisers HNLMS Tromp and Jacob van Heemskerck. Thus when important members of the navy were able to meet for the first time in The Hague in 1945, they were faced with a huge challenge of rebuilding the fragile fleet of the Royal Netherlands Navy at the time. The navy leadership had not remained inactive during the Second World War and had laid out plans for future ships that needed to be built and how many of each class. The only obstacle was that there was little money left in the defence budget to put these plans into motion. The reason for this was that the Netherlands and its biggest colony, the Dutch East Indies had been occupied by foreign invaders during the war and a lot of infrastructure had been damaged during the fighting. This meant that a lot of money had to be dedicated to rebuilding infrastructure and to get the economy going again.

Nonetheless, the navy started to design new ships and ensured that preparatory work for rebuilding the fleet was started. Destroyers were one of the ship classes prioritized during the rebuilding effort since they had shown their worth during the Second World War and the Netherlands had decided to specialize in NATO-context in Anti-Submarine Warfare. Dutch naval experts at the time were especially urging the Royal Netherlands Navy to invest into submarine destroyers since they predicted that this kind of ship would play a major role in future naval conflicts. This judgment was based on the evolution of the role of submarines since the First World War when looking back at how successful they were in the following Second World War. They also recommended how they should be equipped and what tactics should be used to successfully counter submarines in battle. The base requirements set by the Royal Netherlands Navy for the Submarine destroyer 1947-class destroyers, as they were known at this time, reflected these recommendations. However, besides being able to destroy enemy submarines, the requirements also included protection against radioactivity and the ability to perform coastal bombardments. On the other hand, torpedo attacks on other surface ships were not included in the design of the destroyers.

In 1948, six hunters of the twelve planned destroyers were ordered. The four Holland-class destroyers were to be built by three different shipyards. HNLMS Holland was built by the Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij and HNLMS Gelderland by Wilton-Fijenoord, while Koninklijke Maatschappij de Schelde built the remaining two ships: HNLMS Noord-Brabant and HNLMS Zeeland. The construction took longer than expected because they were the first destroyers designed after the Second World War. The Royal Netherlands Navy had not built any new ships for more than five years and there had since been many technological advancements, to implement these advancements took more time than expected. There were also serious doubts about the stability of the new vessels, which resulted in extra measures such as building the mast construction with aluminium instead of steel. Another reason why the construction of the destroyers was delayed was due to the financial problems of the Dutch navy. The navy spent a lot of money to perform maintenance on the old and outdated ships that it had in its inventory. Furthermore, the construction of the Holland-class destroyers cost more than estimated. To save costs and especially time, the navy was in dire need of modern ships to replace some of its pre-war material, the four destroyers were provided with equipment that was built during the Second World War for the German Navy. In addition to these four submarine destroyers, two more other destroyers were planned to be built, but due to cost savings, the construction of these ships was postponed. Nonetheless, on 30 December 1954, the first Holland-class destroyer, Holland, was completed and taken into active service. She was followed by Zeeland, Noord-Brabant, Gelderland, these ships were commissioned in 1955.

All four destroyers of the Holland class served for many years in the Royal Netherlands Navy until they were retired in the 1970s.With HNLMS Holland being sold to the Peruvian Navy in 1978 as the BAP Garcia y Garcia. She was finally decommissioned in 1986.