The admiral has ordered Binghamton to have McHale deliver some monthly reports to New Caledonia, which means a week's R&R for the commander and his crew. When McHale arrives back at his base to tell the men the good news, he learns that the 73 is lost. It seems Virgil took a native girl for an unauthorized ride the night before and after a walk in the jungle with her, when he got back to where he parked the boat it wasn't there.
Now I do question how McHale rode his little boat to HQ without noticing the big boat wasn't tied up next to the little one. But anyhow...
McHale yells at Virgil to go with Tinker to try to find their boat. He comes up with some elaborate camouflage netting to make it look like the 73 is docked right where it normally is, just in case someone comes around.
Of course, Captain Binghamton comes by right on cue, and after complimenting McHale on his wonderful camouflage, being curious as to why he and his men aren't already en route to their vacation trip, he looks under the netting and sees the boat is gone. McHale has no choice but to admit that they "lost the boat," saying nothing about the individual who actually did so on his own.
Binghamton is thrilled. He can now court martial his nemesis and probably have him drummed out of the Navy. While he is preparing those papers, with McHale and Mr. Parker in his outer office, Gruber leads his mates into a clever scheme-substitute another PT boat for their own-which basically means a little paint of different numbers and a couple of other details to make it look convincing.
Christy comes into Binghamton's hut and tells McHale, "Gruber told me to tell you..." In this way, good-guy Christy can let McHale know they have a "73" boat without actually lying to him.
The best scene might have been when McHale goes into Binghamton's office to tell him the boat has been found. The captain is not happy, and has no intention of letting McHale take that vacation trip even though he did find his boat. He sends for another Lt. Commander, Elroy Carpenter to have him get the reward trip. But a nervous Carpy enters and sadly reports that his boat is now missing.
A frustrated Binghamton orders McHale back to his island and proceeds to question Carpenter. McHale is outside at the dock talking to his crew, happy with the substitution they made when Virgil and Tinker show up with the real 73. McHale quickly orders them to clear out and repaint that one as Carpenter's PT 116, and to my surprise, they do get away without being spotted.
Back in the office, Carpenter suggests how odd it was that McHale found his boat around the time Carpenter lost his. They rush outside to check out the 73. Suddenly, here comes Carpenter's PT 116 (really the 73) pulling in next to the new 73. Binghamton is happily now going to send Carpenter to New Caledonia after all, but they happen to discover some aspects Gruber & Co. left on the real 73, now posing as Carpenter's boat. These things-beer cans in a depth charge tube, comic books in an ammo box, put Carpy back in hot water and gets McHale and men the vacation they wanted.
The last laugh is sort of on McHale. As they are riding away from Taratupa to begin their week's trip, they realize they have no beer because it was all left on Carpenter's boat.
There were at least three good strong-laugh scenes. I particularly enjoyed seeing Carpenter (a much underrated actor in my opinion) look so distressed as they kept finding non-issue items on his boat.
We also get to hear the great catch-phrase of Captain Binghamton for the first time in the series: "I could just scream." Wonder how many more episodes before we hear his other great line: "Somebody up there hates me."
To me, this memorable show was one of the series absolute bests...a solid 10.
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