Operation Petticoat is a 1959 movie directed by Blake Edwards and starring Cary Grant and Tony Curtis, later adapted for television in 1977.

It tells the story of the World War II American submarine USS Sea Tiger, damaged during the opening days of the Pacific War, and the crazy adventures of the sub's skipper (Grant) and his crew, including Curtis as a less-than straight-laced Supply Officer, as they try to repair the sub and sail it to Australia for the refit necessary to re-enter the war. This includes picking up a contingent of female Army nurses on one Philippine island and being forced to paint the sub pink when not enough of either red or white undercoat paint is available at another.

Other members of the cast include three who became television stars in the 1960s and 1970s: a pre-Love-Boat Gavin MacLeod as Yeoman Hunkle, pre-Happy Days Marion Ross as Lt. Colfax, and pre-Bewitched Dick Sargent as Lt. Stovall.

The movie was written by Paul King & Joseph Stone (story) and Stanley Shapiro & Maurice Richlin (screenplay). It received an Academy Award Nomination for Best Screenplay.

Spoiler Warning: Plot or ending details follow.

The movie opens in 1959 when Admiral Matt Sherman, Commander Submarines Pacific, arrives to tour the USS Sea Tiger. A discussion between the topside watch and the Chief of the Boat as Sherman boards lets the audience know that Sherman was the first commanding officer of this particular submarine and that the Sea Tiger is scheduled to be scrapped later that day.

Sherman returns to the captain’s stateroom below and starts to read from the captain’s journal he himself wrote during World War II eighteen years earlier: “10 December 1941: Moored starboard side to Mechina Wharf, Cavite Navy Yard, Philippine Islands for provisions and fuel. Directive received from Commander Asiatic Fleet: You will sink or destroy all enemy shipping wherever encountered. Have advised Commander Submarine Force Asiatic Fleet that Sea Tiger will be ready for sea at 1900 – 10 December 1941.” Suddenly Sherman’s reading is interrupted by the sound of an air-raid siren and the Sea Tiger’s Chief of the Boat yelling, “Captain, enemy planes over!” The audience is now back in 1941 and the opening of World War II in the Pacific.

The crew of the Sea Tiger, undergoing resupply at Cavite Navy Yard, try their best to defend their boat and get underway, but it is only a matter of time before the Japanese dive bombers zero in on the immobilized sub and she is sunk next to the pier. Lt Commander Matt Sherman, the submarine’s commanding officer, pleads with the shipyard commander to let him try and raise the Sea Tiger and sail her to the submarine tender Bushnell in Darwin, Australia, a distance of over 2000 miles through Japanese controlled waters, for the repairs necessary to put the submarine back in the war. Reluctantly, Captain Henderson allows Sherman two weeks to get his sub seaworthy and the crew of Sea Tiger set to work to refloat her and get her underway.

Since some of the Sea Tiger’s crew had already been transferred, Captain Henderson arranges for replacements. Among those reporting to Commander Sherman are Lt Nick Holden, an Admiral’s Aide sent to the Philippines to prepare for the admiral’s arrival just before the war broke out, stranding him without an assignment. Lt Holden is also a wheeler-dealer, capable of getting whatever is needed by any means necessary, and is promptly made the Sea Tiger’s ‘Supply Officer’ when Yeoman Ernest Hunkle receives a reply that Sea Tiger’s year-old requisition for toilet paper has been cancelled, “Cannot identify material required.”

That night, Holden leads a team which includes Hunkle and another sailor known as The Prophet on an unauthorized supply run to the navy yard warehouse, gathering everything their submarine needs and loading it all onto a ‘borrowed’ Army truck after narrowly avoiding being caught as looters, Lt Holden convincing a Marine MP his blackened face and dark clothes are in compliance with an order for complete blackout conditions from Admiral Nimitz.

The next morning, Sherman is amazed and dumbfounded as he watches supplies like an oil pump shaft, a refrigeration compressor from an ice house and boxes of toilet paper being loaded aboard the boat. He is also dismayed to learn he has another new crew member, Sgt Ramon Gillardo, a Marine prisoner who escaped from the stockade when it was bombed by the Japanese and who comes with the glowing recommendation that, “…there isn’t a burglar, swindler, pickpocket or fence in the islands who doesn’t love, know and respect him.” Sherman gives in to the addition of the Sergeant to his crew when Holden advises him Gillardo is also an informer and they do not have a sales slip for all their new supplies.

Over the ensuing days, the shipyard commander confronts Sherman about the wholesale scavenging going on and how it all points toward the Sea Tiger’s crew, including missing pipes from barracks' sinks, steering wheels from trucks and the corrugated metal wall from the captain’s office. However, when the Japanese attack the shipyard again, Sherman is forced to request permission to get Sea Tiger underway before the enemy planes return to bomb her again. Again reluctantly, Captain Henderson gives his permission, with the caveat, “You will engage no enemy shipping, and that includes lifeboats. Even if you sight one of the enemy swimming in the water avoid him. He might kick a hole in your side.” Sherman offers his farewell and with the assistance of a local witch-doctor Lt Holden hired, Sea Tiger gets underway with some difficulty, smoke belching from the muffler of number 1 engine before Chief Tostin manages to get the diesels started. Then, as Captain Henderson returns to his office to find literally everything, from his desk to his safe, missing, he remarks to his office staff, “Douglas, I think we’ve been victims of Sherman’s march to the sea.”

Dawn the next morning, Sherman is forced to submerge Sea Tiger, since traveling on the surface in daylight is considered suicide. When minor flooding forces the boat back to the surface for further repairs, Lt Holden and his gang are sent ashore on Marinduque Island , which had recently suffered a Japanese air raid, to scout out the situation and returns a few hours later with five female Army nurses. Their plane had taken off to avoid being destroyed on the ground and never returned and they were the only American personnel on the island. Commander Sherman is left with no choice but to take the women along, against the advice of woman-hating Chief Mechanic’s Mate Tostin, ruler of the Sea Tiger’s engine rooms. One of the nurses is the bumbling, accident-prone Lt Dolores Crandall. Another, Lt Barbara Duran, catches the eye of the engaged Lt Holden. The ranking officer among the nurses, Major Edna Haywood, almost immediately locks horns with Tostin in ‘his’ engine room, replacing a busted valve spring on the refrigerator compressor with one of her flexible girdles.

Once repairs are complete and Sea Tiger is again underway toward Darwin, the submarine comes across a Japanese oil tanker, still fully loaded, moored at an island pier. The target is too good to pass up and the crew of the Sea Tiger ready their only working torpedo tube. Unfortunately, Lt Crandall chooses the wrong moment to try and administer a vitamin pill to Commander Sherman and when ordered out of the conning tower, accidentally fires the sub’s only torpedo. The torpedo speeds ashore, slides up the beach, and explodes against the side of a Japanese army truck. “What happened?” asks Lt Stovall. “We sunk a truck!” Sherman growls in frustration as the Japanese open fire and Sherman orders Sea Tiger back out to sea, coming as close as he ever had to hitting a woman and wondering later in his log, “…can Lt Crandall possibly be a Japanese agent?”

Days later, 24 December 1941, Sea Tiger pulls into port at the island of Cebu for further repairs and repainting and with the hopes of dropping the nurses off with the Army. Unfortunately, with a Japanese invasion expected at any time, all supplies have been hidden in the mountains and the army refuses to take the women. “We could be fighting a guerilla war for years,” the Colonel tells Sherman. Sherman decides to keep the nurses aboard the Sea Tiger. When Sea Tiger’s executive officer, Lt Watson, points out the boat will not be getting to Darwin without the needed supplies and repair parts, Sherman is forced to once again send out Lt Holden, who had been confined to quarters after trying to seduce Lt Duran with champagne in his stateroom, and his gang to get what they need.

Organizing a casino with crooked dealers, where army personnel trade repair parts for casino chips, Holden manages to obtain everything the Sea Tiger needs, including enough white and red lead paint for the primary undercoat. Commander Sherman notes in his log that, "Like a spider in a web he sits there and his victims come to him like flies bearing gifts. He is the only man I know who will probably be presented the Navy Cross at his court-martial.”

By New Year's day, the crew has painted Sea Tiger with an undercoat made by combining both the red and white lead paint together. The resulting color, pink, sickens many of the old salts, especially Chief of the Boat Molumphry, who is told not to sweat it by Lt Watson. “We’re just going to cover it with grey anyway.” But before the new coat of grey can be started, the crew and nurses pause to share a New Year’s feast. While Lts Holden and Duran get closer on a nearby beach, until Duran finds out Holden is engaged to be married as soon as the war is over and sinks the Supply Officer’s raft with him in it, Commander Sherman has another run-in with Lt Crandall and her curling iron. The party is soon interrupted by another Japanese aerial attack and Sea Tiger is forced to put back to sea while still painted pink, but not before taking aboard the wives and children of the casino dealers Holden had made his deal with, including two pregnant women and a goat.

The next morning, a radio broadcast by Tokyo Rose advises the ‘pink submarine’ to start the New Year off right and surrender. The US Navy, believing it does not have any pink subs, considers the broadcast a trick to try and sneak a Japanese sub through the American defenses and orders, “…any unidentified submarine, pink or otherwise, is to be sunk on sight.” When Sea Tiger makes contact with an American destroyer and surfaces in hopes of getting an escort to Darwin, the destroyer opens fire, forcing the sub back under before commencing depth charging.

Unable to contact the destroyed because Sea Tiger’s radio will not transmit, Commander Sherman tries to convince the surface ship they have been sunk by launching an oil slick and debris through the torpedo tube. The captain of the destroyer decides to take no chances and continues with the depth charging, homing in on what sounds like babies crying as the two Filipino women give birth. Finally Lt Holden realizes they have been sending up the wrong kind of debris and convinces Commander Sherman to launch the nurse’s undergarments out the torpedo tube. As the new debris surfaces, it is grappled onto the destroyer and passed up to the captain. “The Japanese have nothing like this!” he says in amazement as he looks at the large cupped bra stenciled ‘Lt Crandall.’

A few days later, Sea Tiger finally arrives alongside the tender Bushnell in Darwin, Australia, still bright pink and listing to one side from the depth charging they endured. Whistles and cat-calls from all the sailors around the harbor prompt Molumphry to say they should have come in at night. “We may be pink and coming in by the grace of a woman’s brassiere, but we’re coming in!” remarks Sherman. A picture of the sub taken by one of the tender sailors, smoke exploding from the number 1 engine muffler, adorns the final page of Admiral Sherman’s journal.

The audience is back in 1959, and Admiral Sherman is informed the Sea Tiger’s captain has arrived and the boat is ready to get underway to the scrapyard. Sherman comes topside to greet Captain Nick Holden, presenting him with the journal. “Did you put everything in here?” Holden asks nervously. “Yes,” Sherman confirms. “I feel it will be in safer hands now.” “You know it will,” Holden replies. Sherman then informs Holden that while Sea Tiger has not been spared from the scrapyard, his next command will be a brand new atomic submarine, also named Sea Tiger. He gives Holden permission to get underway and then walks ashore to greet Mrs. Nick Holden, the former Lt Barbara Duran, and their two sons.

When asked where Mrs. Sherman is, Barbara replies, “We waited as long as we could and finally had to take a cab.” They all then look down the pier at the sound of a car’s horn. “Oh that must be her,” Sherman comments just before the car slams on its brakes, accelerates again and knocks the Admiral’s car into the back end of a Navy bus, locking the bumpers together as the bus drives away. “Yes, that’s her,” Sherman sighs as the former Lt Delores Crandall apologizes profusely.

The movie ends as Admiral Sherman, his wife and four daughters and the Holden family watch the Sea Tiger pull away from the pier for the last time, an explosion of smoke emerging from the number 1 engine muffler again. “Strange, still that number 1 engine,” Sherman remarks. “I guess they were never able to fix that.”

Some of the plot points of the movie were based on real-life incidents. Most notable were scenes set at the opening of WWII, based on the actual sinking of the submarine USS Sealion (SS-195), sunk at the pier at Cavite Navy Yard, the Philippines; Commander Shermans letter to the supply department on the inexplicable lack of toilet paper, based on an actual letter to the supply department of Mare Island Shipyard by Lieutenant Commander James Wiggin Coe of the submarine Skipjack (SS-184); and the need to paint a submarine pink, due to the lack of enough red-lead or white-lead undercoat paint.

See also: 1959 in film

1977 television series

The movie was adapted as a TV series which ran from 1977 to 1979. Initially starring John Astin in Cary Grant's role of Lt Commander Sherman, the TV series was probably most notable for the casting of Tony Curtis' daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis, in the role of Lt. Duran, the female nurse Curtis character marries by the end of the original movie. Most of the cast was replaced for the show's second season, a decision that led to low ratings and cancellation. Only 24 episodes of the series was produced in total.

See also: 1977 in television