Rockets or Romance

Prisoners

 * Colonel Hogan - Bob Crane
 * Corporal Louis LeBeau - Robert Clary
 * Corporal Peter Newkirk - Richard Dawson
 * Sergeant Andrew Carter - Larry Hovis
 * Sergeant Richard Baker - Kenneth Washington

Camp Personnel

 * Kommandant Wilhelm Klink - Werner Klemperer
 * Sergeant Hans Schultz - John Banner

Semi-Regulars

 * General Albert Burkhalter - Leon Askin

Guest Stars

 * Guard - Kenneth Du Main
 * Radio Operator - James Savett
 * Major Heintzen - Norman Alden
 * Lily Frankel - Marlyn Mason

Synopsis
Hogan becomes the partner of a beautiful underground agent when he and his men team up with the underground to destroy a guided missile battery.

Story Notes

 * This is the one hundred and fifty-sixth produced episode of the series, but is the one hundred and sixty-eighth and last episode to be shown on television, and is also the twenty-fourth and last episode shown for the Sixth Season.
 * This is the last episode of the series, both the last to be broadcast and last chronologically.
 * This is the final episodic appearance for Bob Crane as Colonel Hogan, Werner Klemperer as Kommandant Klink, John Banner as Sergeant Schultz, Robert Clary as Corporal LeBeau, Richard Dawson as Corporal Newkirk, Larry Hovis as Sergeant Carter, Kenneth Washington as Sergeant Richard Baker and Leon Askin as General Albert Burkhalter.
 * CBS aired this, the series finale, a month before most of its other shows wrapped up their seasons. Hogan's Heroes was to become a victim of the network's massive overhaul for the 1971-72 season. (Other casualties included Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and The Ed Sullivan Show.)

Timeline Notes and Speculations

 * This episode takes place in late April of 1945, not long before Stalag 13 is liberated by the Allies. The work detail is filling shell hole craters in the road outside of camp. The Germans, both Wehrmacht and SS panzer, are positioning units in and around Stalag 13 for combat. Included among these are mobile rocket launchers; hence the involvement of our heroes in the action. Lastly, Hogan tells his underground contact that he has been at Stalag 13 for three years (1942 to 1945).
 * Klink tells Hogan the Allies will be stopped before they can capture Munich - which was captured on April 30, 1945.
 * Inconsistency: The character of Lily Frankel (played by Marilyn Mason) appears in a Season Five episode, "Six Lessons from Madame LaGrange," in which she and Hogan are quite familiar with each other. In this Season Six episode, he meets her for the first time. So, this episode cannot be the last episode of the series chronologically. Also in Six Lessons, Frankel tell Hogan that she is to leave for England soon, so it would seem that her work in the underground was compromised and she had to leave quickly. If that were true, she would have not come back for another mission.
 * The last statement made in the episode and thus in the series seems to reflect the series's end (see Quotes).

Quotes

 * Hogan: Frankly, General, I thought it was a lousy neighborhood anyway.

The quote, the last one in the episode and in the series, is spoken by Col. Robert Hogan to General Albert Burkhalter in reference to the general saying a rocket is heading toward the area of the general's house. In context of the series' ending, it seems to speak of the end of the series where the prisoners live in a "lousy neighborhood."

Bloopers

 * As Hogan is waiting for Frankel to arrive, he hears sounds coming towards the door. He positions himself to one side of the door so he can surprise whoever comes inside. The only problem with Hogan's plan is that he is now standing directly in front of a window -- frosted like most indoor set windows on the show, but a moving shadow would have been visible. If there had been any German soldiers outside, they could have easily shot him.
 * When Hogan meets Frankel at the lookout, he is surprised to find she is a woman. He shouldn't be, though, as they'd worked together before in Six Lessons from Madame LaGrange.
 * The mobile rocket launcher used in this episode, which we have seen often in previous episodes, looks nothing at all like a German Meillerwagen or Vidalwagen -- assuming these are supposed to be V-2 rockets or the like.
 * Burkhalter says that the rockets will be launched at England to coincide with a Luftwaffe blitz. After Operation Bodenplatte in January 1945 the Luftwaffe was too weak to blitz any place. The last significant bomber-type attacks on England happened during the early 1944 Operation Steinbock which is what Burkhalter might have been referring to -- except that V-2 strikes did not begin until September.