Updated: October 10, 2025

Lt. Commander Quinton McHale ( Ernest Borgnine ) was the commander of PT73 a World War II motor torpedo boat with the most bizarre crew ever.

The show was built around the conflict between the regulation ignoring, con artist McHale and his long suffering superior officer, Captain Wallace B Binghamton ( Joe Flynn ), assisted by Lieutenant Elroy Carpenter ( Bob Hastings ), who commanded PT Boat 16.

Binghamton was born in New York and had been head of the Long Island Yacht Club before the war.

McHale was loved and admired by his men but Binghamton hated him, and the Navy put up with him because, in the South Pacific where PT 73 was originally based at the island of Taratupa, he knew the territory and the Japs like the back of his hand.

He was born in Michigan and had been the captain of a tramp steamer in the South Pacific when Admiral Reynolds commissioned him as a lieutenant and assigned him to Taratupa as the commander of Squadron 19 and PT Boat 73.

McHale and his crew of pirates ( As Binghamton called them ) lived on the far side of the island in what is called McHale’s Island where they also played host to an unreported Japanese prisoner of war named Fuji Kobiaji ( Yoshio Yoda ) who served as McHale’s cook and had turned Taratupa into ‘The Las Vegas of the Pacific’. Binghamton’s attempts to get the goods on McHale were the focal point of the series.

McHales crew comprised of Lester Gruber ( Carl Ballantine ), Harrison Tinker Bell ( Billy Sands ), Willy Moss ( John Wright ), Joseph “Happy” Haines ( Gavin MacLeod ), Virgil Edwards ( Edson Stroll ) and Quartermaster George ( Christy ) Christopher ( Gary Vinson ).

For the last season of McHales Navy, the entire cast was transferred to Italy where they helped maintain the occupation of the small town of Voltafiore against the possible takeover of German troops.

Binghamton now also had to deal with the towns conniving mayor, Mario Lugatto ( Jay Novello ), who was almost as much a con-man as McHale.