Roscoe Turner and the lion cub who rode shotgun across the National Air Races

Roscoe Turner won the Thompson Trophy three times—the only pilot in history to do so—flew cross-country with a lion cub named Gilmore sitting in the front cockpit, and did it all in a self-designed powder-blue uniform with diamond-studded wings. He was part showman, part genius, and entirely self-made. This is the story of the most colorful pilot of aviation’s golden age.

Who Was Roscoe Turner?

Turner was born in 1903 in Corinth, Mississippi, with no money, no connections, and no flight training. He talked his way into a barnstorming ride as a young man, and that single experience set the course of his life. Unable to afford formal instruction, he learned the way many early aviators did: watching, asking questions, memorizing cockpit layouts on the ground. When someone finally let him take the stick, he never gave it back.

By the late 1920s, Turner had entered the world of competitive air racing—the Thompson Trophy, the Bendix Trophy, and the National Air Races at Cleveland, which in that era were the absolute center of the aviation universe. Tens of thousands packed the grandstands to watch airplanes scream around pylons at 200, 250, even 300 miles per hour, wingtips thirty feet off the ground, with no fly-by-wire and no G-suits.

Why Did Roscoe Turner Fly With a Lion?

Turner understood something most competitors did not: speed alone would not make you famous. You had to give the crowd a reason to remember your name after the trophy was handed out.

So he built a persona. The tailored uniform made him look like a general from a country that didn’t exist. He drove a car with a giant lion painted on the side. And he acquired Gilmore, a lion cub named after the Gilmore Oil Company that sponsored his racing career.

This was not a one-time publicity stunt. Turner flew thousands of miles with that lion—coast to coast, cross country—in an open biplane at 150 miles per hour. Gilmore wore a custom-made parachute harness and sat in the front cockpit like any other passenger. By all accounts, the cub would curl up and sleep through most flights, apparently soothed by the engine noise and wind.

When Gilmore grew into a 200-pound young African lion with claws, teeth, and opinions, Turner finally retired him to a zoo after the cat got restless during a flight. But the legend was already cemented. For the rest of Turner’s career, every airplane he flew carried a lion painted on the tail.

The Racing Record That Still Stands Alone

Turner’s racing achievements were extraordinary, spectacle aside.

In 1933, he won the Bendix Trophy, racing from New York to Los Angeles in a Wedell-Williams racer—a tiny monoplane with a Pratt & Whitney Wasp engine crammed into a fuselage barely larger than the engine itself. He averaged 214 miles per hour across the entire continent. That meant hours of sustained speed, navigating by compass and railroad track, managing fuel, weather, and an engine running at its absolute ragged edge.

He won the Thompson Trophy in 1934, 1938, and 1939. Each of those races was a knife fight—flying at over 280 miles per hour around a closed course, pulling four and five Gs in the turns, with other airplanes on your wingtip doing the exact same thing.

The 1934 Thompson Trophy: A Finish for the Ages

The 1934 Thompson Trophy race produced one of the most dramatic finishes in air racing history. Turner was flying the Wedell-Williams Number 57, an airplane so treacherous that its designer, Jimmy Wedell, had been killed in one the year before.

On the last lap, Turner came screaming around the home pylon when his engine began losing power. Fuel pressure, oil pressure—something in the gauges was telling him the engine was about to quit. He had perhaps ninety seconds of power left, flying in a tight left bank at 270 miles per hour, fifty feet off the ground, with a hundred thousand spectators watching.

Turner stayed on the course. He nursed the dying engine around the final turn, crossed the finish line, and won by seconds. Then the engine seized—stone dead. He dead-sticked it onto the field with the propeller frozen in place.

When asked why he didn’t pull out, Turner replied: “I would rather crash on the course than quit above it.”

The Showman Who Was Actually a Craftsman

The spectacle obscured something important about Turner: he was a meticulous planner who happened to dress like a ringmaster. He worked with his mechanics obsessively, studied engine data, knew his fuel consumption numbers to the gallon, and tested his race lines at partial power before running them at full speed.

He was not a daredevil who happened to survive. He was a prepared professional who understood that the line between bravery and recklessness was measured in preparation.

Life After Racing

After his third Thompson Trophy win in 1939, Turner retired from racing, determined to go out on top. He founded the Roscoe Turner Aeronautical Corporation in Indianapolis, operating a flight school that trained military pilots during World War II. Thousands of young men learned to fly under his instruction. The showman became the teacher.

Turner also fought publicly for better safety standards in air racing—an ironic crusade given his own reputation, but one driven by watching too many friends die, including Jimmy Wedell and Lee Gehlbach. He spent the second half of his life trying to pass along the lesson that preparation, not luck, separated the survivors from the statistics.

Turner died in 1970 in Indianapolis at age 67. He was inducted into both the National Aviation Hall of Fame and the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America.

Key Takeaways

Roscoe Turner is the only pilot to win the Thompson Trophy three times (1934, 1938, 1939), cementing his place as the greatest closed-course air racer in history.
He flew thousands of cross-country miles with Gilmore, a lion cub wearing a custom parachute harness in the front cockpit of an open biplane—one of aviation’s most audacious sponsorship arrangements.
Behind the showmanship was serious craft. Turner was a meticulous planner who studied engine data, tested race lines at reduced power, and knew his fuel numbers to the gallon.
After retiring from racing, he trained thousands of military pilots during WWII and advocated for improved safety standards in the sport that made him famous.
Turner was entirely self-made—no money, no formal training, no connections. He built his career on nerve, skill, and an unmatched instinct for self-promotion.

Sources: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum archives, Turner collection; Carroll V. Glines’ research on the golden age of air racing.