During World War II with the Netherlands and colonies outside the Americas occupied by Germany or Japan Van Heutsz and over twenty other KPM ships formed the base of the United States Army permanent local fleet in the South West Pacific area under the South West Pacific Area Command for the duration of the war.

On return Van Heutsz resumed the former route under the Koninklijke Java-China Paketvaart Lijnen N.V. line; however a wave of piracy was sweeping the area and the ship was taken by pirates north of Hong Kong during an afternoon, forced to a new destination and looted through the night into the next morning.

The 4,588 GRT ship was built by N.V. Koninklijke Maatschappij 'De Schelde', Scheepswerf en Machinefabriek, Vlissingen (Flushing), Zeeland, Netherlands.

[1] The ship began service with Koninklijke Paketvaart-Maatschappij (Royal Packet Navigation Company) commonly KPM on 8 November 1926 serving inter-island routes within the Dutch East and to Singapore, China and Africa.

[2][3] A typical route would include Belawan, Penang, Singapore and Chinese ports such as Shantou (Swatow), Xiamen (Amoy) and Hong Kong on a passage taking three days.

On 2 September 1937 Van Heutsz with 60 cabin and 1,200 deck passengers collided with several other ships before being grounded on Green Island, Hong Kong.

With the government in exile in London and both the home country and colonies outside the Americas at war and then occupied the ship's registry and corporate entity was changed for the duration to Willemstad, Netherlands Antilles.

At Kota Bharu the Japanese were landing forces to begin the campaign to occupy Southeast Asia and the Dutch East Indies.

[5] On 8 December 1941 the Netherlands government in exile declared war on Japan with the Governor General in the East Indies issuing a proclamation accepting the challenge to resist Japanese expansion.

[8][9] On 26 March 1942 the Chief Quartermaster USAFIA chartered 24 Dutch ships for 45 days while long term arrangements were worked out in London and Washington.

Operationally the SWPA vessels were under "full and complete control" of General MacArthur[10] Van Heutsz was one of those ships and became part of the U.S. Army's permanent local fleet from 26 March 1942 to 1 September 1945 assigned the identifier X-11.

The convoy reached its destination at the end of the month despite Japanese submarine activity in the vicinity of Sydney and the Australian east coast.

[15] As the Allied advance moved north the ship returned to home waters including landing Australian troops of the 26th Brigade (Australia) at Morotai in early April 1945.

[2][18][19][20] Van Heutsz, with registry changed to Amsterdam, began operating with the Koninklijke Java-China Paketvaart Lijnen N.V. (Royal Interocean Line) at the end of 1947 after a charter by Nederlands-Indische Regering from March to October 1946.

In the afternoon on 15 December 1947 twenty-five pirates disguised as passengers with arms concealed in luggage took over the ship north of Hong Kong.