The aircraft struck Brush Mountain, in the Jefferson National Forest, approximately eight miles west of Roanoke. The crash site is at an elevation of approximately 3,100 feet, in terrain that is forested and steep. All five occupants of the aircraft were killed.
The specific time of the crash, the exact flight path, and the precise circumstances of the pilot’s decision-making in the deteriorating weather conditions are part of the FAA accident report, which details the investigation’s findings. The finding of pilot error — specifically, attempting instrument flight without the instrument rating that the conditions required — was the primary causal factor identified.
Murphy was 45 years old when he died. He had survived three wounds in combat, two years of some of the most intense fighting in the European theater, a prescription drug dependency and self-managed withdrawal, and two decades of Hollywood film production. He died in a plane crash in Virginia on a business trip.
He was buried six days later, on June 7, 1971, with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. The ceremony was attended by family, military officials, and friends. The specific ritual of a military funeral with full honors — the folded flag, the rifle salute, the bugle playing taps — was the Army’s formal acknowledgment of what he had been to the institution.
The grave at Arlington, in Section 46, draws visitors who come specifically to see it. The number — by the common account, second only to Kennedy’s among the most visited graves at the cemetery — reflects the specific hold that Murphy’s story has had on American memory over more than fifty years. The story of the Texas sharecropper’s son who the Army didn’t want, who fought his way to the Medal of Honor, who came home to tell the truth about what it had cost him, who was buried at Arlington before he was fifty — is a specifically American story, and the people who visit the grave understand it as one.