The Wackiest Ship in the Army (1960) on Netflix
Approved19601h 39mComedyDramaWar
Lieutenant Rip Crandall is given the USS Echo, an old sailing ship, and a crew of misfits. He tries to refuse the command, but only Ensign Tommy Hanson can handle the sails.
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- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb6.3/102,886 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Plot summary
In 1943, at Townsville in Australia, the Navy hands Lieutenant Rip Crandall the USS Echo, a sailing vessel unlike anything else in the Pacific Fleet. Crandall wants no part of the command, but Lieutenant commander Vandewater, an old sailing companion, points to his poor fitness report and warns him that turning it down means no other ship. Ensign Tommy Hanson, whose mistake cost Crandall a yacht race before the war, is the one man aboard who can work the sails. Hanson takes the lieutenant drinking with several of the crew, hoping he will grow attached to them. The Echo barely clears the harbor and sails into a storm.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Wackiest Ship in the Army (1960)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film was first developed for Ernie Kovacs in the lead with Jack Lemmon as the ensign, but Kovacs was unavailable and Lemmon was judged too mature for an ensign, so Lemmon took the lead and singer Ricky Nelson the supporting role.
- The real USS Echo could not be used for the film or the later television series; after carrying food and supplies it became a bar, and in 2015 it was judged too derelict to preserve and broken up for scrap.
- The film's ship was drawn from the real USS Echo (IX-95), a 40-year-old twin-masted scow transferred from the New Zealand government to the United States Navy in 1942 and returned to New Zealand in 1944.
