HKB Vineta

Escalating international tensions in the nineteen thirties prompted The Netherlands to bolster its defenses. At Hook of Holland, reliance upon the old fort was relieved by the construction of “Batterij V”, a new coastal battery in the dunes to the northwest of the existing fort. The battery featured three artillery casemates, a fire control post, four shelters and two equipment buildings. In May of 1940 it fired at German troops in its hinterland.

After the capitulation of the Netherlands’ forces, the Dutch soldiers disabled their guns, but the Germans simply made repairs and moved in. The new occupants renamed it “Vineta” after a navy training ship, which had in turn been named for the mythical Baltic city of Vineta, the “Atlantis of the north”. Once incorporated into the Atlantic Wall the battery underwent extensive modifications. Four type 671 artillery bunkers were added and connected to the existing Dutch bunkers. The Dutch fire control post met German standards and was not replaced. The battery featured troop shelters, gun casemates, a hospital, a bath house, a workshop, a canteen, living quarters and storage spaces to the rear of the artillery bunkers. Two cannon bunkers near the entrance to the compound covered the rear defense.

After the war the Netherlands Defense Department took over the battery. The hospital bunker was enlarged with an annex for monitoring the Nieuwe Waterweg, and one of the anti-aircraft bunkers became a radar station base. Four bunkers served air defense purposes, while the Dutch navy occupied a communications station and a command post. During the Cold War, the U.S. Army established a relay station with huge dish antennas serving as tropospheric scatter radio links between West-Germany and Great-Britain.

Virtually all the defense works of this battery still exist but the area is off limits to the general public. Its only occupants at present are bats. For a fine view of the artillery bunkers, which are dug into the sand dune, look at them from the Boulevard. Pay attention to the camouflage: the surface of the bunkers shows small square indentations, a treatment intended to help the bunkers blend visually into the surrounding dune vegetation.

Today the beach is about half a mile further to the west than it was sixty years ago. This is the result of the creation of the Maasvlakte, an industrial site on reclaimed land in the North Sea. The sand recovered during this construction project was deposited north of the Noorderpier breakwater.