The Blue Thunder Helicopter: A Brief History Of The Iconic '80s Film Chopper

Aficionados of 80s action movies no doubt remember the 1983 classic, "Blue Thunder." It tells the story of a pair of Los Angeles police officers who are chosen to test out a new military-grade helicopter, the titular Blue Thunder, only to find themselves embroiled in a top-secret government conspiracy. It's a textbook example of old-school vehicular action filmmaking, bolstered beyond its contemporaries by its numerous high-flying chopper battles.

As this was well before the advent of common-use CGI in filmmaking, nearly all of the helicopter scenes in "Blue Thunder" were filmed with an actual helicopter, specially modified for use in the film. While the real Blue Thunder was nowhere near as advanced as it was depicted in the movie or its tie-in television series, it was quite a stylish bit of aeronautic engineering. The question for any deep-pocketed die-hard collectors of 80s-era memorabilia is whether there's any hope of obtaining the Blue Thunder for a burgeoning collection.

In the film "Blue Thunder," the titular chopper is said to be equipped with a dizzying array of next-generation military and police features, or at least next-generation for the 1980s. These features include a 20 mm front-mounted electric cannon, a closed-circuit TV camera with a powerful zoom lens, an infra-red scanner, long-range microphones, and a "whisper mode" that all but eliminated the vehicle's operation noise. The big highlight feature was the craft's "turbine boost," which allowed it to perform a 360-degree flip in the film's climax.

Obviously, none of these features were real, but the helicopter they were allegedly installed in was. Or, to be more accurate, the helicopters. Blue Thunder was actually two different helicopters, designated N51BT and N52BT. These vehicles were modified from a pair of French Aérospatiale SA-341G Gazelle helicopters and used for action scenes. The cockpits of these choppers were tweaked to make them look a little more angular and militaristic, the skids were replaced with shorter models, and both bodies were given a striking black paint job.

Following the original release of the "Blue Thunder" film, both N51BT and N52BT continued to see use in their intended roles as part of the 1984 "Blue Thunder" television series. Unfortunately, reception to this series wasn't particularly strong, and it was canceled after a single season of 11 episodes. Following the cancellation, both Blue Thunder choppers entered the possession of a New Mexico scrap collector named Michael Gruben. In the mid-1980s, Gruben rented out one of the Blue Thunders to an ABC-affiliated production company to be used in action scenes for the miniseries "Amerika," but beyond that, neither chopper saw the screen again. Finally, in 1988, N52BT was scrapped for parts and its FAA registration officially canceled, with N51BT following in 1994.

Ironically, the instance of Blue Thunder that actually lasted the longest wasn't even a real helicopter. Alongside the real choppers, a mock-up of the Blue Thunder cockpit was made for the film's close-up scenes. This standalone model managed to find a place on the back lots of MGM Studios for a time, though sadly, it too was ultimately scrapped in 2009. With that, there are no instances of the original Blue Thunder remaining in the world. If you wanted to own a piece of the film, you'd have to settle for a scale RC model.