Dear Dad mostly through letters. Dear Dad "Dear Dad" was the 12th episode of the first season of the TV series "M*A*S*H". It originally aired on December 17, 1972 and was repeated on May 20, 1973. This was the first episode to use an epistle as part of the narrative, a device that would be used in later episodes. Hawkeye writes home to his father during the Christmas season, relating a number of amusing and personal anecdotes including Radar's effort to mail home a jeep piece-by-piece, the monthly morality lecture, Trapper's local medical philanthropy, and the ongoing non-secret relationship between Frank and
S. S. Minnow the "Minnow"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s disappearance, which at first determined that the Skipper was responsible, then later concluding that the Skipper wasn't aware that a storm was coming. It is also revealed in this episode that the reason for the "Minnow"'s wreck was that Gilligan threw its anchor overboard without a rope attached to it. A minnow is a very small bait fish, but the TV boat was actually named for Newton Minow, who "Gilligan's Island" executive producer Sherwood Schwartz believed "ruined television". Minow was chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1961, and is noted for a speech in which