She was laid down at Wilmington, Delaware, on 24 March 1943 by the Dravo Corporation; launched on 2 October 1943; sponsored by Miss Ruth C. Tech; and commissioned on 19 December 1943 at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

She served in the screen of a convoy to England in April and, upon return to New York, she interrupted her convoy-escort routine to conduct experiments at Quonset Point, Rhode Island, with the Navy's FXR (foxer) gear, an underwater noise-making device that trailed behind ships as a defense against German acoustic torpedoes.

Back in New York by early June, Burrows stood out of port on the 13th with her longest and largest convoy, more than a hundred ships bound for Bizerte, Tunisia.

The voyage took the convoy through the Strait of Gibraltar, where reports of Luftwaffe attacks prompted Burrows and the other escorts to lay smoke screens twice daily over the ships.

On 20 August, the destroyer escort got underway for New London, Connecticut, where she put this training to good use during service as a practice target for American submarines.

Later in the war, as the German effort faltered and the Allies invaded Europe, Dönitz moved his submarines closer to their home bases and concentrated operations in the mid-eastern Atlantic, the Irish Sea, and the English Channel.

In spite of the heavy pounding, Burrows maintained her station while accomplishing temporary repairs; and, on 25 March, she steamed into the safety of New York harbor.

On 8 June, she began the westward voyage, pausing first at Culebra Island in Puerto Rico for shore bombardment exercises and then at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for refresher training.

Finally, she carried out depth charge exercises with a bottomed submarine in Gonaïves Bay, Haiti, before transiting the Panama Canal on 28 June.

After a short repair period in San Diego, California, the destroyer escort headed west, arriving in Pearl Harbor on 19 July.

Enemy submarines and aircraft no longer presented a threat, but the thousands of anchored or floating mines in the water were a hazard to the convoys and had to be destroyed by the escorts.

On 15 September, Burrows escorted her convoy into Buckner Bay, turned, and left port immediately to escape approaching Typhoon Ida.

Shortly after she tied up in Yokohama, the destroyer escort received orders to Manila Bay and thence to Guiuan, Samar, to embark five officers and 58 men of the Philippine Army and two Japanese prisoners of war.

Renamed HNLMS Van Amstel, she served for 17 more years under the Dutch flag until the Royal Netherlands Navy declared her to be excess to their needs in 1968 and sold her to Simons Scheepssloperij N.V. of Rotterdam for scrapping.