Dorsetshire’s greater displacement and wider beam rode out the first few waves easily enough, though the entire column was now scattered, with ships loosing contact with one another in the murky darkness and scattering in all directions. There was a gracious interval between those first two waves and the great wave that would follow them.
Captain Agar could see the direction the waves were propagating, and steered in such a way as to best ride them out, but they were merely outriders in the storm. A huge segment of the island was collapsing into the sea, and it would generate a tsunami that would be well over 40 meters high. When the great wave finally came, the might of the sea lifted Dorsetshire up like a bath toy, her bow tipping down and then riding wildly up as it finally passed. The ship careened down with a heavy roll, ash and sea creating a wild white haze all around her, but Dorsetshire righted itself and eventually ran true again. Exeter had also escaped and was well off to starboard, but the light cruisers Dauntless and Dragon fared a little worse, eventually managing to ride the wave out, but seeing many men washed overboard. As for Electra and Express, the wave smashed the two together in a much more violent collision, and both would be completely swamped. Their crews would descend in terrified silence into the sea, lost to a man.
Off the coast of Anjer, the first two waves rolled through the anchorage site of the 2nd Division, again sending all the transports into a dizzying dance on the sea. These waves were big enough to swamp small boats laden with troops, and overturn rafts carrying artillery and equipment. Men clung to rope nets on the sides of Sakura Maru, desperately trying to keep themselves from being flung into the sea. The great wave would soon follow, smashing everything in its path with that wall of unstoppable seawater.
General Hitoshi Imamura, the overall commander of the Japanese 16th Army, would suffer a very peculiar fate. He was aboard the transport Ryujo Maru, a little over 100 kilometers from the fiery mountain, and well on the other side of Cape Merak above Banten Bay. When it finally came, the tsunami was still powerful enough there to create a 30 meter wave, nearly 100 feet. The ship rocked so heavily that he was thrown from the deck of Ryujo Maru along with his Vice Chief of Staff, and no one saw the two men go overboard into the ash covered water. He had been maneuvering to help coordinate the withdrawal, but now the operation would be completely unhinged.
The entire landing site descended into utter chaos. Minesweeper No. 2 was literally lifted up and flung at the transport Fushimi Maru, landing right astride the forward deck, and then the two ships rolled into the sea and the transport’s back was broken by the tremendous weight. Anchor chains snapped like tinsel, whipping through the water to sweep away smaller boats. Every deck of the 30 transports remaining there was heavily swamped, with 14 ships capsized and three others driven madly onto the nearest shore. The wave was so powerful that it would carry the Dainichi Maru twelve kilometers inland, where it would later be found on a jungle knoll, beached like Noah’s ark.
The men of 2nd Division had struggled for hours to reach the coast, only to find a 40 meter wall of water surging in from the Sunda Straits, and carrying everything before it, boats, rafts, ships and men alike. Many of the troops had just recovered from the terrible sound, clustered in small groups on the shore, dazed and disoriented, only to find this new terror, a wave they could not even hear coming, sweeping them to their doom.
Transports Brazil, Fushimi, Somedomo, Taketoyo, Tatsuno, Tofuku, Columbia, Maebashi, Genoa, Hoeisan, Atsuta, Dainichi, Tokiwa, Motoyama, Pacific, Kizzan, and Reiyo Maru would all be a total loss in the waters off Anjer and Merak, and with them thousands of troops from the 2nd Division would perish. Only 12 of the 30 ships would manage to stay afloat, but everyone aboard was so dazed and thunderstruck by the disaster that they were virtually lost as an effective combat force. In one fell blow, the mighty Krakatoa had done what Montgomery had spent hours with his maps trying to plan and devise. The entire Western Task Force of the Japanese invasion of Java was completely shattered.
The great wave surged inland at Lada Bay south of Anjer, and would roll 10 kilometers inland, sweeping all before it. People, homes, possessions, animals were all caught up in the massive movement of water, with a death toll that would be counted in the tens of thousands. The water careened up the flow channels of streams and small rivers that found their way to the sea just south of Anjer, and into a broad, low valley, some six miles wide. It would inundate the entire area, creating a small lake there for weeks before the water eventually drained back to the sea. Farther north near Merak, the wave was powerful enough to sweep completely over the nine miles of lowland just south of the knobby wrinkled rise of the mountains that formed the Merak Peninsula. It would surge over the lower ground, all the way to Banten Bay on the other side of the peninsula, where more Japanese troops that had landed there would also be swamped and drowned.
Only the transports anchored well out in the bay had a chance to survive, for the peninsula shielded them from the direct assault of the tsunami. So a few battalions and auxiliary troops that still remained in those ships would live to tell the terrible story of what had happened to their division, but they would be called the Mimi nai dansei ever thereafter, the men without ears.
The great wave pushed completely through the Sunda Straits, around the small islands of Sebuku and Sebesi north of Krakatoa, and into the long bay running up to the port of Oosthaven on Sumatra. There it would crash ashore, sweeping away boats, launches, docks, warehouses, and the entire town itself, rendering the port completely useless. It was so powerful that it migrated all the way to Batavia, and was still 28 meters high when it reached that major port.
As for the British, they fared a little better, being much further inland east of Batavia when the thunder and water came. The one forward deployed battalion, 5th Beds & Herts, was completely wiped out near the village of Serang when it was caught by the wave as it slogged east through the grey ash and rain. But most of the remainder of the division had already been given the order to pull out of Batavia hours earlier, and they were on the long road east when the thunderous roar was heard. The men dropped their rifles, covered their ears in misery, but the sound was not so debilitating there, the head of the column already 180 kilometers east of Krakatoa, and approaching Cirebon.
There it eventually blundered into a company of Japanese infantry from the Shoji Detachment that had landed at Patrol on the north coast with the intention of seizing Kilidjati Airfield. This regimental sized force had already been engaged by the 1st Sherwood Forrester Battalion, and the 18th Divisional Recon Battalion, with fighting about 50 kilometers west of Cirebon. The commander, Toshihari Shoji, had received word of the disaster at Merak and Anjer, and now realized that his was the only Japanese force west of the main landings at Kragan, completely isolated.
He radioed for instructions, but was unable to get through. Seeing that his transports were still off loading supplies, he took matters into his own hands and decided to preserve his regiment, withdrawing back towards the coast. This detachment would end up being the only effective fighting force that was delivered by the Western Task Force, and he would later be commended for his initiative in saving those troops.
The British were starting to deploy to engage that blocking company when it slowly dissolved and withdrew, leaving the road to Cirebon open. So they pressed on, keeping a wary eye north, but found no further enemy presence. The ash fall was slowly thinning out as they reached that port, but the darkness persisted, and it would take all the next day just to sort units out and reassemble the battalions in some semblance of order.