The explosive premise driving "A Klink, a Bomb and a Short Fuse" ultimately fizzles in Phil Sharp's contrivance-laden script that epitomizes 1960s situation comedy: sustained wackiness that carries the narrative toward a punchline payoff. Playing it strictly as farce, Sharp emphasizes the buffoonish qualities of the German jailers Sergeant Schultz and especially Stalag 13 commandant Colonel Klink, whose obsequiousness toward visiting General Burkhalter induces wincing at fifty paces, although it is the incompetence of one of the Heroes that sets this dubious narrative in motion.
With Corporal Newkirk having filched the latest German codebook from Klink's office, Sergeant Carter photographs it for transmission to London. Only one problem: Carter forgot to load film into his camera. Meanwhile, Burkhalter, suspecting that Allied radio transmissions are being made from Stalag 13, arrives with a radio detection device that shuts down the Heroes' transmitting even when they're able to successfully photograph the codebook. (The device also previews the comical contraption central to season four's "Klink vs. The Gonculator," not coincidentally scripted by Sharp as well.) How to convey this crucial information to London?
An Allied bombing raid on a nearby railroad gives Heroes leader Colonel Hogan the answer: He has Carter mock up a fake bomb to be planted in the compound, and with the Germans preoccupied with resolving this potentially explosive intrusion, they'll forget about the radio detection device, enabling radioman Sergeant Kinchloe to send the information. (And Ivan Dixon's performance reinforces that Kinch is essentially Hogan's second-in-command.) Sure enough, a bomb appears in camp the next day, with Hogan joining the Germans to, so to speak, kick the tires as they stare at it--unaware that the actual bombing caused part of a tunnel to collapse on Carter, still with the bogus bomb, meaning the bomb that Hogan actually just kicked, triggering that ominous ticking sound, is real.
You could fly a squadron of B-24 Liberators through Sharp's plot holes and logical lapses, so don't take "A Klink, a Bomb and a Short Fuse" for anything but a comedy of errors, although even as a laugh it is already recycling tired tropes about the silly Germans, particularly Klink, who, intimidated by Burkhalter's threats, orders Schultz to tell the POWs to hide any radio they might have to avoid Burkhalter's detection device. Now we know why Germany lost the war. Or not. This explosive premise winds up a dud.