HNLMS Philips van Almonde: the naval ship that never sailed

Just imagine: the naval vessel that you have built is completely finished, only the weapons still need to be fitted. Then, all of a sudden, you get the order from higher up to blow up the brand-new vessel. This happened to De Schelde in the May days of 1940. The Gerard Callenburgh class destroyer HNLMS Philips van Almonde was already on the slipway when the Germans invaded our country. The boilers, turbines, gearboxes and a large part of the auxiliary equipment were already on board. But to prevent the ship from being seized by the occupying forces, it was blown up with explosives on 17 May 1940 by a British demolition team. All that remained of what would have been an ultra-modern asset to the fleet was a pile of scrap metal.

Not much is known about the construction of the Philips van Almonde, Ron says. That is because the archives of the shipbuilding department of De Schelde were lost in the war. What Ron does know is that the introduction of the Callenburgh class fitted in with the development of increasingly larger, faster, and better-armed destroyers in response to the threat from the Japanese Navy, which at the time was operating huge and very dangerous destroyers.

The forerunners of the Callenburgh class were the Wolf class and the Admiral class, both of English design. The eight Wolf class ships were almost all built by De Schelde between 1910 and 1913, while one of the eight Admiral class hunters (1928-1931) came from the shipyard in Vlissingen. “Each class became heavier and heavier,” says Ron. “Wolf class ships reached a maximum speed of 20 knots and were over 70 metres long, whereas the Callenburgh class reached 37.5 knots and were over 106 metres long. But also, the armament became heavier and more advanced with each new class.”

Ron knows that when HNLMS Philips van Almonde was blown up, the warship was already on the slipway, almost ready to be launched. The keel of the ship was laid on 2 March 1939. “In retrospect, of course, it is a shame that it was deliberately destroyed, but there was obviously no other option. Little is known about the blowing up of the ship, we only know that a team of British specialists carried out the operation. But in any case, an ultra-modern destroyer was lost. The usable materials that remained were declared war booty by the Germans and were stored in a warehouse by the inner harbour, the so-called ‘Beutelager’,” says Ron.

“Those materials were largely used for the construction of German fishing boats, never finished fighters and so on. The Germans loaded the scrap metal from the destroyed ship on to a ship and took it away.” According to Ron, after the demolition, there was a difference of opinion between De Schelde and the Dutch State. “De Schelde claimed that the Dutch State stopped work on HNLMS Philips van Almonde after the war broke out; the State in turn denied this and maintained that the work was only stopped after the capitulation. A bit of nit-picking, of course.”

“The State also claimed that the destruction of the ship happened by order of a British officer and not by order of the Dutch State. In any case, it is unclear whether the Royal Netherlands Navy explicitly ordered the demolition. Incidentally, De Schelde did receive compensation from the State. The sister ship of HNLMS Philips van Almonde, HNLMS Isaac Sweers, survived her blown-up sister by only two years. In 1942, the Isaac Sweers sank in the Mediterranean Sea. Ron: “The ships of the Admiral class were lost in the Second World War in the Dutch East Indies, except for HNLMS Van Galen. She sank in the Merwe Harbour near Rotterdam in May 1940.”