In the mid-1920s, the Netherlands placed orders for four new destroyers to be deployed to the East Indies. They were built in Dutch shipyards to a design by the British Yarrow Shipbuilders, which was based on the destroyer, which Yarrow had designed and built for the British Royal Navy.[1]
The ship's main gun armament was four 120mm guns built by the Swedish company Bofors, mounted two forward and two aft, with two 75mm anti-aircraft guns mounted amidships. Four 12.7 mm machine guns provided close-in anti-aircraft defence. The ship's torpedo armament comprised six 533mm torpedo tubes in two triple mounts, while 24 mines could also be carried. To aid search operations, the ship carried a Fokker C.VII-W floatplane on a platform over the aft torpedo tubes, which was lowered to the sea by a crane for flight operations.[2]
The ship was laid down on 26 August 1925, at the shipyard of Burgerhout's Scheepswerf en Machinefabriek in Rotterdam, and launched on 2 April 1927. The ship was commissioned on 25 January 1929.[3]
On 23 August 1936, Piet Hein, the cruiser and her sister, and the destroyers and, were present at the fleet days held at Surabaya. Later that year on 13 November, both s and the destroyers, Witte de With, and Piet Hein made a fleet visit to Singapore. Before the visit they had practised in the South China Sea.[4]
On 13 October 1938, she collided with Java in the Sunda Strait. Java had to be repaired at Surabaya.[5]
She served mostly in the Netherlands East Indies, and when war broke out in 1941, she was at Surabaya. She took part in Battle of Badung Strait in the night of 18–19 February 1942, where she was torpedoed and sunk by the, with a loss of 64 men, including its captain J.M.L.I. Chömpff.