We begin with the crew dodging the errant bullets from Mr. Parker's target practice shooting a machine gun at a target being flown past by an airplane. He not only cannot hit the target, but he cannot even hold the gun steady enough to shoot in the general direction of the target, letting it drop and spin all over the place.
Figuring Binghamton will see Parker's score and ship him out, McHale suggests to his crew that they could change his score, but he walks away leaving them to do the deed. Gruber, who always seems to take charge when the crew is doing anything, decides to up Parker's score from zero to 98-far better than their best man, Virgil's 89.
Any viewer at this point would figure that score is a huge blunder on Gruber's part because Parker's really high score would gain him unwanted attention for being too good. Of course, this is what happens. Binghamton gets goaded by another captain into betting his cherished ship's clock that his man, Parker, can outshoot the other captain's best man.
McHale comes up with a plot to cheat, by having Virgil shoot the target remotely while Parker is firing his misses from the dock. But some other sailors have, for reasons unknown, followed Virgil as he left the area just before Parker shot, and they stop him from shooting. Parker does so poorly in the contest, he not only never hits the target, but nearly wipes out a bunch of sailors and then spins the gun again and shoots down the plane hauling the target.
So Binghamton is shipping Parker to the Aleutians. He is going along on the 73 where Parker will be transferred to that other captain's ship to begin the physical transfer. McHale comes up with a wild scheme to change things. He knocks off Binghamton's glasses-we earlier saw how poor the captain's vision is without those glasses.
The men engage in a clever deception, with sound effects and all, and they make it seem like a Japanese airplane, a Zero, is attacking the boat. They drop the wing tip of a Zero that Gruber had as a souvenir, into the water with Fuji dressed like he's a pilot. They get Parker manning a machine gun, and have him fire away at a plane he cannot see because, they tell him, it's coming right out of the sun. They tell Parker he got it, give Binghamton his glasses so he can see the "pilot" on the wing tip (it was like a big surfboard) and be grateful that Parker saved his life. Naturally, the transfer is cancelled.
Of course this plot was less realistic than most on this series. It was meant to be a zany plot, with the credits showing the story came from Tim Conway and Gary Vinson (Christy from the crew). Like a good episode of Get Smart or Fawlty Towers, just enjoy the silliness because there were a lot of laughs in this one-a 9.
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