OFFICER FRANCIS MCNEIL FRANK MURPHY, LAPD ASTRO (Air Support To Regular Operations) Division, in Blue Thunder, test-flew a new kind of police helicopter--actually more like an Air SWAT (Special Weapons And Tactics) helicopter gunship. What he learned in that test flight led him to an act that in any other context would be outright mutiny. Instead it made him the most celebrated police helicopter pilot of all time, in civil-libertarian circles. Contents [hideshow] 1.1. Vietnam 1.2. ASTRO Division 1.3. Death of a City Councilwoman 1.4. Blue Thunder 1.5. The Discovery 1.6. Murphy's Mutiny 1.7. Anticlimax Vietnam Frank Murphy served his country in Vietnam, as a helicopter pilot. How his Vietnam career began, the narrative does not make clear. It ended with a disgusting incident involving a North Vietnamese Army prisoner. Murphy was at the controls of his helicopter and was trying to fly down a river. Aboard was a fellow officer, F. E. Cochrane, several members of a squad of U.S. troopers, and their prisoner. For reasons that never became clear, Cochrane literally threw the prisoner overboard during the passage. Had the helicopter suffered such damage that it could no longer carry the weight of so many men? Possibly. But we have no way to know for sure. Murphy would tell people never to guess what was in the mind of a power-mad officer like F. E. Cochrane. And Cochrane himself, as we shall see, is now dead.When Murphy returned to base he tried to rat out Cochrane. Cochrane's rejoinder was to try to remand him for general court-martial. But the ultimate remanding authority would not consider it. Murphy had been wounded in that action, and so the United States Command, or someone in it, decided the best thing to do was to ship Murphy off to Walter Reed Hospital, Stateside, and forget about the whole affair.A surgeon wasn't the only doctor who treated him at Walter Reed. A headshrinker also saw him. Ultimately he drew a Medical Discharge, with this notation on it: Delayed Stress Syndrome. (The American Psychiatric Association would, in the ensuing years, change the name of this entity to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Chronic/Delayed. ) At about this time, South Vietnam collapsed, and the United States Command suffered the most humiliating evacuation since Dunkirk.Murphy never thought to see Cochrane again. How wrong he was. ASTRO Division His career in ASTRO was interesting, to say the least. He first worked as Observer for a Latino pilot named Montoya. Montoya introduced him to the home, in nearby Encino, of a young Hollywood actress who loved to work out, in the nude, on the top floor of her home, under a glass roof. Did she know she had become the star attraction for randy pilots in LAPD-ASTRO? No one knows. She never once filed a complaint.But Montoya also introduced Murphy to another term: JAFO. Which stands for Just Another F___ing Observer. A typical lodge put-down. Murphy was used to that; he'd had old hands call him worse in the Army.Eventually he made pilot of his own air unit (Air Twelve), and a rookie officer, Richard Lymangood, was assigned to him as an observer. And thus would begin a wild adventure the like of which he thought he'd never have again. Death of a City Councilwoman The night began routinely enough. Lymangood forgot about the undercover dope pushers the LAPD used, and the red beanies they wore, until Murphy reminded him. The next incident was not routine: two armed men robbed a liquor store and briefly dragged a customer out as a hostage. One of the perps shot at Air Twelve, the last thing Lymangood expected. (Lymangood actually thought being an observer would be quiet duty!) The second gave up more easily after Murphy dropped down low enough to stir up dust around him.The next thing they saw was an abandoned ten-year-old Chevy, with no plates at all, parked on Linden Road in Brentwood. They thought nothing of it at the time. That's when Lymangood asked Murphy about Encino, and Murphy decided to take Lymangood to see the actress doing her nude workout. That was a mistake, for two reasons. For one, though the girl never complained about helicopters buzzing her like that, a neighbor complained about the rotors keeping him awake. For another, while Air Twelve was five miles away from where they should have been, two Hispanic men brutally attacked City Councilwoman Diane McNeely. Murphy got the all units call and flew back as fast as he could.That incident ended badly. Both perpetrators, being only lightly armed, died when much more heavily armed ground patrolmen shot them. And before that happened, one of the perps shot Ms. Neely in the neck. That wound would eventually prove fatal. Murphy would remember one other thing that happened: one of the perps, when he fell, dropped a briefcase, obviously one he had stolen from Ms. Neely. It burst open and released a bunch of papers. Murphy's rotor wash scattered those papers hither and yon. But as the perp went down, Murphy caught a look at his face. It looked very much like that NVA prisoner whom Cochrane had shoved out of his helicopter in Vietnam. Murphy nearly crashed just by replaying that incident in his head.Then he noticed one more thing: the abandoned Chevy was now no longer to be seen on Linden Road.When Air Twelve returned to base, the ASTRO Division commander, Captain Braddock, grounded them both. The grounds: they were five miles away from where they were supposed to be, and were keeping an honest citizen awake while hovering over a woman's window, while Diane McNeely was under attack after arriving at her Brentwood home. Braddock shocked Murphy by saying the Department was treating that incident as an attempted rape. Rape?!? There wasn't any rape! he cried. He also said the abandoned Chevy must have been a stakeout vehicle. Braddock tried to brush it off, but Murphy was having none of that, because:1. The Chevy had no plates at all. How did it get there in Brentwood?2. The Chevy wasn't there after the attack on Ms. McNeely had gone down.3. Rapists almost never travel in pairs.None of that stopped Braddock from grounding them. Braddock dismissed Lymangood and then reminded Murphy he was facing a psychiatric re-evaluation after an incident about a month earlier.Murphy left Braddock's office, and when he left, he drove a slalom around the pylons on the police garage exit ramp, timed with a special one-minute timer on his wristwatch. He made it out, but not without disturbing one pylon slightly.He drove home and played back two voice-mail messages from his girlfriend, Kate. When she and her son came to see him, he whirled and pointed a gun at her, acting on reflex. Thankfully, he didn't fire. This sort of thing happened often, and the two quarreled about that, but only briefly--because he gave her a birthday present. They talked briefly about when they would make their relationship permanent, and then she left.Not long after that, KBLA-TV reporter Alf Hewitt reported the sobering news that Diane McNeely had died of her wound. Murphy drove out to Brentwood to do some investigating of his own. He found one sheet of paper that the investigators had not recovered. It had mostly Spanish writing on it, which he could not read. While he was out there, he got a beeper call--from Braddock. With orders to report in right away. Blue Thunder Braddock told him the news: he was not grounded anymore, but was back on flying status. He introduced him to two obvious Federal suits named Icelan and Fletcher. They simply told Murphy they were due at a weapons-testing facility outside the city at first light. The story they told was this: with the Olympic Games set to begin in Los Angeles next year, the federal government did not want a repeat of the massacre of the Israeli athletes in Munich in 1972. To prevent that, they would beef up the police as much as possible. And this included introducing a new kind of helicopter--for ground control. An armed helicopter. Which, as Murphy knew and reminded them, was illegal.And then he got his first look at Blue Thunder.It was the plug-ugliest, most fearsome flying machine he had ever seen. In deep police blue, it sported a multifaceted canopy, not the rounded canopy he was used to. It carried a six-member Gatling gun in its nose. The most prominent marking on it was the number 02 on each side.The demonstration was horrific. The idea was to show that this helicopter gunship could kill terrorists without harming civilian hostages among them. Nevertheless, he watched as Blue Thunder did kill the dummies that were supposed to be terrorists, but also destroyed one civilian for every ten terrorists. Icelan called that an acceptable ratio. When Blue Thunder landed, Murphy got another unpleasant surprise. The pilot was none other than his old nemesis, F. E. Cochrane, who had made colonel in the Army before retiring, and willing to brag about being nice to People In High Places in order to get that rank. Cochrane did not want Murphy anywhere near that prototype--but Murphy was there, he gathered, because the Mayor of Los Angeles wanted an LAPD officer to test-fly that helicopter over his city. Cochrane made a show of swallowing his gorge and insisted Murphy meet him next morning for a check ride.When he got back to ASTRO HQ, Murphy found Montoya, turned over the note he got from Ms. Neely's yard, and asked him to translate--and to keep it under your hat. Montoya agreed.Next morning came the check ride--which ended with Murphy and Lymangood crashing in the Watts section. An engine failure required him to auto-rotate to that crash landing. Murphy suspected Cochrane of having more than a little something to do with that mechanical failure. He also noted with satisfaction that several construction workers rescued them handily and hustled them out of there, while keeping an angry crowd at bay.Later that day, Montoya found Murphy and told him how the paper translated. It was mostly notes in Spanish, but it told of strangers to Watts deliberately stirring up trouble. It also used one non-Spanish word, in all-capital letters: THOR. Murphy did not have a classical education or anything close to it. So he did not know then that Thor was the Viking god of thunder. Had he known that, he might have made the connection between a project named after this Viking god, and the nickname of Blue Thunder attached to that monster gunship he was supposed to test-fly the next evening. But Murphy divined one thing from the rest of that memo: something ugly was brewing, something three men conspired to kill Diane McNeely to cover up.Murphy also hitched a ride with his girlfriend and her son, to go out to an amusement park. So he was on hand when, after she missed a turn to get into a key ride, she cheerfully made an illegal U-turn and drove the wrong way on a one-way street to find the correct park entrance. He little knew then how much he would come to rely on her for that skill.That night he stayed at Kate's house for dinner. Toward the end of the evening, he put Kate's son to bed. But then Kate found him lying half on her son's bed, half on the floor. She was relieved to find he hadn't simply driven home without telling her--but in fact he had dreamed, again, of that horrific incident in Vietnam. As he would tell her later, Cochrane's re-introduction into his life brought the memory of Cochrane's murder of the NVA prisoner right back, as if that incident had happened only the day before.Morning came. Murphy found Cochrane, who taunted him about his engine failure. Murphy was not fooled. He had one message: Back off. Cochrane interpreted that as a threat and, as Murphy learned later, ratted him out to Braddock. Despite that, and yet another dust-up between Braddock and Murphy, Murphy and Lymangood were still good-to-go to test-fly Blue Thunder that evening. Lymangood even boned up on all the souped-up surveillance and computer-query capabilities the craft had. The Discovery This boning-up would stand both in good stead. The first thing they did was to take out a small fuse from a ceiling-mounted holder, disabling the cockpit voice recorder. They wanted their conversation to be absolutely private. Both agreed on where to stash the fuse.They tested the Whisper Mode (nearly silent running), and the highly directional microphones that let them listen in on any sort of conversation they wanted. If the implications of this capability struck either man, they didn't show it--mostly because the one intimate conversation they listened in on, was between a colleague and some married woman with whom he was having a quickie. But when Lymangood queried the computer database, he found his own file in good order--while Murphy's file was listed as under repair. What was that all about?They then got a call to return to base at once. They were just going to, when they spotted Cochrane's Corvette leaving the LAPD building in a hurry. They decided to follow, instead of landing. While Murphy shadowed the Corvette, Lymangood queried the database on Cochrane. He discovererd him listed as sole survivor in an major action in Vietnam (a report Murphy knew was bogus), and a current assignment: Project THOR.There was that name again. Maybe Murphy didn't know then that Thor was a Viking god of thunder, but he knew Diane Neely had been interested in THOR. Lymangood queried the computer again to find out what it was: Tactical Helicopter Offensive Response--using helicopter gunships to quell domestic uprisings.Cochrane's Corvette pulled in at the Los Angeles federal building. Instantly Murphy engaged Whisper Mode, while Lymangood aimed the cameras (including an IR camera or Thermograph ) and mikes at the building. Soon he spotted a conference that obviously included Cochrane, from his voice.That conference chilled both men. Fletcher was involved, along with a number of other unknown suits. So also was someone who must have been the third man involved in killing Diane McNeely. The federals were not pleased with the killing, and were even more worried about Murphy. Cochrane almost demanded permission to kill Murphy, and assistance doing it.All this, Lymangood recorded on videotape. And then one of the conferees opened the window. And spotted them.Murphy and Lymangood returned to base, where Braddock grounded them again, this time indefinitely, for disobedience of orders. (This included responding with obviously made-up bad-radio noises.) Murphy would have liked to tell Braddock about what he had seen and overheard, but could not speak with Icelan in the room. Murphy did note that Lymangood managed to steal the tape right out of the memory bank.But when Murphy drove to Lymangood's neighborhood, he arrived just in time to see paramedics loading Lymangood into a body bag. He bugged out at once--and, on the police band, overheard the LAPD issuing an APB on him--on suspicion of killing Lymangood.At home, he found two messages waiting for him. One was from Lymangood So far, so good. Check Big Brother on Blue Thunder for more. The second was from his girlfriend, condoling about Lymangood's death.Next morning, Murphy entered ASTRO HQ surreptitiously. He made his way to Blue Thunder and climbed inside. First he replaced the fuse for the voice recorder and played it back. Lymangood had left him a message, to pick up the tape from a Dempster Dumpmaster at a drive-in theater at the corner of Victory Road and Riverside Drive.A mechanic walked up to him and told him to get out of the helicopter. Murphy grabbed his service gun, pointed at the mechanic, and ordered him to leave. Then he put on the helmet and did the fastest pre-flight checklist he had ever run, to steal Blue Thunder right off the ASTRO pad. Murphy's Mutiny The first thing he did when he got airborne was to call KBLA-TV (Channel 8) and leave a message for Mario Machado or Alf Hewitt to expect a package. Then he called Kate, gave her the address of the drive-in, and asked her to retrieve the tape and get it to the TV station.He met her at the drive-in, hovering over the two trash bins as she searched both. She found the tape--but an LAPD SWAT team arrived also. Murphy stirred up enough dust to blind the police officers so Kate could escape.Then he had a distraction. Montoya appeared, at the controls of one of two helicopters, both carrying SWAT squads, that surrounded him, one on each side. Murphy chatted casually with Montoya, but refused to put his chopper down. Montoya gave the order to fire--but the bullets, of course, bounced right off the armor-plate hull of Blue Thunder. Murphy then used his Gatling gun (steered and aimed by his helmet) to blast away Montoya's headlight. Montoya fled, and Murphy chased him and, using the gun again, raked his right engine so he would have to land. Thankfully, Montoya landed safely.The other helicopter would take more persuasion. So Murphy led that other chopper a merry chase down the L.A. reservoir channels until eventually the other vehicle crashed into a pylon. Again, no one aboard was killed. Murphy did not want casualties. He wanted to expose a conspiracy that threatened them all.Murphy returned to the road, and noted that another squad car had stopped Kate. The squad, guns drawn, were asking her to get out of her car. Murphy approached slowly in Whisper Mode and got below the eye level. (The road was on a built-up ramp.) Then he revved up and reared up behind the squad. He distracted them just enough for Kate to drive away from them. They gave chase--and Murphy used his Gatling gun to blow their squad car neatly in two. Again, he noted with relief, he could stop that squad car without killing his fellow officers.Kate drove as crazily and cheerfully as he remembered from the amusement-park outing, to get to KBLA-TV. Once, in fact, she drove the wrong way on a one-way street to shake the other police squads. Once she made it into the building, Murphy turned away.Because he half-expected the authorities to raise the stakes on their attempt to bring him down. And raise them they did. They sent a two-ship element of F-16 Fighting Falcons armed with Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles to shoot him down.Only they didn't succeed. First he evaded one missile by flying close enough to an obvious hot spot: a barbecue shop in Little Tokyo. The Sidewinder blew it to bits and showered the whole neighborhood with chickens. Which the people in the neighborhood ate, recalling the scene in A Tale of Two Cities when a wine cask fell to a cobblestone street and broke open, and everyone in the neighborhood rushed to sip the wine.Murphy didn't stop to watch. He headed for the ARCO towers in downtown Los Angeles--and when a second Sidewinder came at him, he managed to decoy it into the sun's reflection on one of the towers. The Sidewinder hit and showered the street below with typewriters and other debris from destroyed offices.Murphy had had enough of this. Now he used his Gatling gun and blew off the wing of one of the Falcons. The pilot ejected and parachuted safely to the street. The other F-16 turned tail and flew off.Then came his old nemesis, Cochrane, flying a Hughes MD5 Defender. Its 20-millimeter cannons must have had armor-piercing rounds. He was wounded, one of the facets of his canopy was nearly shattered, his right engine was compromised, and his gun was locked in the forward position, so he could not steer it. The two of them fought a classic dogfight, until finally Murphy did something he had only bragged about before: he looped the helicopter. That maneuver brought Cochrane neatly in his gunsights, and he promptly blew the Hughes out of the sky, and Cochrane with it. Cochrane would thus become the only human casualty of Murphy's Mutiny.The sun was about to set, and Murphy was running out of fuel. So he set Blue Thunder on some railroad tracks in the path of an oncoming train. Using his trick watch, he timed his escape just right before the two-engine train rammed Blue Thunder and destroyed it completely. Anticlimax Murphy got back home by hiking out of the Los Angeles industrial district, where he had set down, and hailing a cab. When he got back home he found Kate--and Alf Hewitt, and a full KBLA-TV film crew--waiting for him. Would he like to make a statement? What, was Hewitt kidding? A man was dead! Let them give him some time to work that out, for crying out loud!Then he got a call from Braddock. He had never imagined that his boss would sound demanding and contrite both at once. The bottom line was: Murphy needed to come back to base, Romeo-Foxtrot-November. Murphy didn't argue--but he showed up with Alf Hewitt and his film crew in tow, so nobody would pull any funny stuff.There, Braddock did make a statement. First he expressed his appreciation, to Murphy and to Divine Providence, that the casualty count was no more than one, for which Murphy would not face charges. Then he pledged the full co-operation of the ASTRO Division with the investigation into the deaths of Diane McNeely and Richard Lymangood. An investigation that, Murphy gathered, the Mayor had re-opened. Incredibly, Fletcher, Icelan, and several other suits were now detained for questioning. As soon as he had a private moment with Braddock--and a slightly shaken-up Montoya--Murphy learned the rest. The tape that Murphy and Lymangood had made had done the trick. Alf Hewitt had received it before the suits had a chance to erase it remotely. He had played it and called the Mayor for reaction. The rest was the beginning of history. That history ended with a number of trials in the California Superior Court and in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California.Braddock died shortly after testifying against Fletcher and Icelan, and telling the various courts about the role Cochrane had played. Incidentally he revealed also that a re-examination of Murphy's crashed helicopter had revealed clear evidence of sabotage, for which Cochrane was the prime suspect. Montoya succeeded to the command of the ASTRO Division, and Murphy soon found himself back flying plain ordinary unarmed police helicopters, this time with a new observer. Murphy himself would succeed to that command and would hold it for a number of years before he died.