Many baby boomers in Hawaii might remember the 1960 movie “The Wackiest Ship in the Army,” which starred Jack Lemmon and a young Ricky Nelson.

But few of them might know it was a true story and that the ship’s captain became a Hawaii Kai resident.

The captain was Meredith “Rip” Riddle. During World War II he was given the assignment to drop off “coast watchers” to spy on Japanese ship movements in the South Pacific. The order came from Gen. MacArthur himself.

World War II buffs know that the war was largely won because of superior military intelligence. We broke both the Japanese and German codes and could read their communications. Part of this effort was to place coast watchers on South Pacific islands to observe Japanese ships and radio their whereabouts.

In the movie, one of these coast watchers had been killed, and the Army desperately needed to replace him. They conscripted an old schooner, the Echo, to slip through enemy waters and drop off the Australian spies. Capt. Rip Crandall (as they called him in the movie) had been a yachtsman and was given the assignment.

To fool Japanese ships and scout planes, several crew members wore grass skirts, wigs and coconut bras to appear to be native women. “We were followed by the enemy but managed to avoid them,” Riddle told me in an interview in 2007. “We sailed out in the open, and they believed we were innocent and left us alone.”

The Echo succeeded in its mission, and the information the spies provided was crucial in winning several South Pacific battles.

“The movie oversimplified what we did,” Riddle says. “Thousands of coast watchers — they didn’t like to be called ‘spies’ — helped in the war effort all over the South Pacific. We dropped off only one in the movie, but in actuality it was probably around 50.”

Riddle says they did wear coconut bras and grass skirts a couple of times, but the ship was never captured or sunk, as in the movie. It was returned to its owners in Wellington, New Zealand.

Riddle did have a young executive officer, as was played by Nelson in the movie, named Bob Shannon.

Readers may have been intrigued by the title – shouldn’t it have been “The Wackiest Ship in the Navy”? “We were loaned to the Army and took orders from them,” Riddle explains, “but remained under the final guidance of the Navy.”

Riddle was very pleased with the small part he played in the war effort and was happy he managed to get through it. However, he credited thousands of others who did their share, and didn’t want to be seen as a hero. “There were a lot of people helping.”

Some of his work was humanitarian. “We had tons of Spam and corned beef, and gave a lot of it to natives who were hungry. We managed to do pretty good at helping out.”

Was he afraid, I asked? “You can’t say you’re not scared. But you can’t live with your heart in your mouth and be normal. Maybe that’s why I’m not normal!”

Adm. Chester Nimitz came to meet the crew when they returned to Pearl Harbor. “He met everyone coming back,” Riddle recalls, “congratulating them and thanking them for what they did. He was a quiet old gent, more like a grandfather than a fleet admiral. But he was a sharp guy and knew his business. I was with him on several occasions and liked him very much.”

After the war Riddle wrote up his story for Argosy magazine. It was turned into a movie and short-lived TV show. The movie was filmed at Pearl Harbor. Windward Oahu locations simulate Australia, and the South Pacific island of New Britain has an uncanny resemblance to Waimea Canyon and Opaekaa Falls on Kauai.

Hollywood jumped into the World War II genre in the 1950s with a set of mostly noncombat war comedies about leaky ships with oddball crews. “Mister Roberts” (1955), “South Pacific” (1958) and “Operation Petticoat” (1959) paved the way for “The Wackiest Ship in the Army” (1960), which in turn led to the hit TV show “McHale’s Navy” (1962-66).

Riddle served in the Navy for more than 30 years and then worked in the Hawaii maritime business. He lived in Hawaii for 45 years and died in 2007 at the age of 92.

Bob Sigall, author of the “Companies We Keep” books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories each Friday of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@Yahoo.com.