Roscoe Turner and Gilmore the Lion - The Racing Pilot Who Flew With a Cat in the Cockpit

Roscoe Turner was a champion American air racer of the 1930s who flew with a full-grown African lion named Gilmore riding in the cockpit behind him. Far more than a showman, Turner remains the only pilot to win the Thompson Trophy three times (1934, 1938, and 1939) and also captured the Bendix Trophy in 1933. His self-built racer, the Turner RT-14 Meteor, survives today at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

Who Was Roscoe Turner?

Roscoe Turner was born in Corinth, Mississippi, and grew up poor. He drove an ambulance during the First World War and came home with a lasting appetite for engines - and for attention.

He emerged into aviation in the late 1920s, just as America fell in love with flight. Charles Lindbergh had crossed the Atlantic alone, and a young man in a leather helmet and goggles had become the most glamorous figure imaginable.

Turner understood the era better than most. In those days, flying was a business that ran on sponsorships, prize money, and newspaper headlines. A quiet, modest aviator went hungry. A loud, spectacular one prospered. So Turner made himself impossible to ignore.

Why Did Roscoe Turner Dress Like a Colonel?

Turner designed his own uniform: a powder blue tunic with gold buttons, riding breeches, gleaming boots, a diagonal Sam Browne belt, and pilot’s wings that no air force on earth had ever issued. He waxed his mustache to needle points.

He also gave himself the rank of Colonel. That caused him trouble when the actual military objected, but the title eventually became more or less official through the state of California and the governor of Kentucky.

The effect was part airline captain, part circus ringmaster - and that was exactly the point. The costume was a sales tool for the airplane itself.

The Lion in the Cockpit: Who Was Gilmore?

Around 1930, Turner struck a sponsorship deal with the Gilmore Oil Company of California. The company’s brand was a roaring red lion, seen on gas pumps up and down the West Coast.

A painted lion on the fuselage wasn’t enough for Turner. He acquired a lion cub and named him Gilmore after the oil company. The two traveled the country together, city to city and air show to air show - Turner in his powder blue uniform, the lion padding alongside him across the ramp.

Imagine being a child in 1931, watching a gleaming airplane taxi in, a man dressed like nothing you’d ever seen stepping out, and then a lion following behind. You’d remember it your whole life. That was the entire idea.

Did the Lion Actually Fly?

Yes. As a cub, Gilmore rode along in the air. Turner even had a small parachute made for the lion, insisting that if he ever had to bail out, he wasn’t leaving his cat behind. Whether it would have worked, no one ever had to find out.

But lions don’t stay cubs. Gilmore grew into a full-sized African lion of better than a couple hundred pounds - far too much animal to have loose in a cockpit at cruise. By some accounts, Gilmore even got airsick.

Eventually the flying had to stop. Turner retired Gilmore to life on the ground and, by every account, treated him like family. When the lion died, Turner had him preserved, and Gilmore stood in his home for the rest of Turner’s life.

Was Roscoe Turner Actually a Great Pilot?

Absolutely. It would be a mistake to write him off as a stunt man. When the money was on the table, Turner was one of the finest air racers the United States ever produced.

Air racing in the 1930s was the fastest and deadliest sport in the world, and its centerpiece was the National Air Races.

The Thompson Trophy was a closed-course pylon race - pilots tearing around a circuit marked by tall pylons, wingtip low, pulling turns hard enough to drain the blood from their heads. It was wingtip-to-wingtip at better than 300 miles per hour, down low, where a mistake was often fatal. Many pilots died flying it.

The Bendix Trophy was different: a coast-to-coast cross-country dash to Cleveland or wherever the races were held that year. It rewarded a different kind of nerve - the grinding, lonely courage of pushing a highly strung race plane through weather, darkness, and thin mountain air for hours.

Turner won both. He took the Thompson Trophy in 1934, 1938, and 1939 - the only man ever to win it three times - and won the Bendix Trophy in 1933.

The Turner RT-14 Meteor: An Airplane Built to Win

For most of his career, Turner flew other people’s machines, chiefly the beautiful Wedell-Williams racers built at a small shop in Louisiana. But by the late 1930s, he wanted a machine of his own, built around a single idea: go around the pylons faster than anybody.

The result was the Turner RT-14 Meteor, often called simply the Turner Special. It was a brute - a big radial engine on the front, a barrel of a fuselage, stubby wings that wanted only to go fast in a straight line, and retractable landing gear to keep it clean.

The airplane was a handful. Those short wings meant it came across the fence hot and landed hot, and it did not forgive a sloppy pilot. Turner was not a sloppy pilot. He flew the Meteor to back-to-back Thompson wins in 1938 and 1939.

Then he did something rare in that game: he quit while he was ahead. The history of air racing is full of men who flew one race too many. Turner won his third Thompson, climbed out of the Meteor, and walked away on top - undefeated and alive.

Where Is Roscoe Turner’s Airplane Today?

The very same Turner RT-14 Meteor survives and is on display at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. It is the actual airplane Turner built, raced, and won with.

Even parked and silent, it looks like it’s doing 300 miles an hour. The tiny wings and enormous engine tell you exactly what kind of pilot it took to fly it around a pylon with the ground twenty feet off the wingtip and half a dozen other racers doing the same.

What Roscoe Turner’s Story Really Teaches Us

We tend to remember aviation’s golden age as innocent and romantic - scarves, open cockpits, and derring-do. But it was also brutally practical. Aviation was clawing its way from novelty to industry, and it needed money, public affection, and heroes.

Turner grasped that the airplane needed a salesman as much as an engineer. Every time he taxied in with his lion and a child’s jaw hit the ramp, a few more people fell in love with flying. Some of those children grew up to become the pilots, mechanics, and engineers who won a war and built the modern airline system.

The showmanship wasn’t separate from the flying - it was part of the mission. Turner was selling the dream and backing it up by being one of the fastest men alive. He was both the clown and the master, the costume and the ice water.

He lived to be an old man, which in his profession made him nearly a unicorn. He ran a flying service, trained pilots during the Second World War, and finally received the recognition he’d chased his whole life. And he never stopped talking about his lion.

Key Takeaways

• Roscoe Turner was a 1930s American air racer from Corinth, Mississippi, famous for both his flying and his powder blue self-designed uniform.
• He flew with a pet African lion named Gilmore, named after his sponsor, the Gilmore Oil Company; the cub even had its own parachute.
• Turner is the only pilot to win the Thompson Trophy three times - in 1934, 1938, and 1939 - and he also won the Bendix Trophy in 1933.
• His self-built racer, the Turner RT-14 Meteor (“Turner Special”), carried him to back-to-back Thompson wins in 1938 and 1939.
• That same Meteor is preserved today at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.