During WW2, Lt. Rip Crandall, who was a yachtsman before the war, takes command of the USS Echo, a sailing ship, for a secret mission in waters patrolled by Japanese warships.

Lieutenant Rip Crandall is hoodwinked into taking command of the "Wackiest Ship in the Navy" - a real garbage scow with a crew of misfits who don't know a jib from a jigger. What none of them knows, including Crandall, is that this ship has a very important top-secret mission to complete in waters patrolled by the Japanese fleet. Their mission will save hundreds of allied lives - if only they can get there in one piece.—A.L.Beneteau <[email protected]>

1943. Lieutenant Rip Crandall of the US Navy is excited for his first commission captaining a ship, the USS Echo which is in port at a secret base in the Coral Sea. His excitement turns to dismay when he not only sees that the Echo has seen better days and could well have ended up in the junkyard instead, but that it is not a destroyer or other conventional military-styled vessel but rather a schooner. Furthering his anxiety is that all the crew members have no experience sailing except for his First Officer, Ensign Tommy Hanson, who reminds Crandall that they had met once before in their pre-war civilian lives in '39 when a then inexperienced Hanson almost wrecked his sailboat in a San Diego to Honolulu race. Hanson volunteered for this assignment to prove to Crandall that he's not a screw-up as that previous encounter may have suggested. Unable to get out of the commission, Crandall learns that he only has a few days to train his crew before they are to sail the Echo four hundred miles in dangerous open waters to New Guinea after which his duty on this particular assignment is completed. If he and his crew survive the trip to New Guinea, Crandall may have a different view of the assignment when he learns the top-secret nature of the Echo's ultimate task, which if they succeed could change the face of the conflict in the Pacific Theater.—Huggo