Roscoe Turner, Gilmore the Flying Lion, and the Powder-Blue Showman Who Won the Thompson Trophy Three Times

Roscoe Turner was a showman-pilot of aviation’s golden age who remains the only person to win the Thompson Trophy three times - in 1934, 1938, and 1939. Famous for his powder-blue uniform, waxed mustache, and a lion cub named Gilmore who flew in his cockpit, Turner combined genuine racing talent with a marketing instinct that funded his career and advanced early aviation technology.

Who Was Roscoe Turner?

Roscoe Turner was born in Corinth, Mississippi, in 1895, in cotton and red-dirt farm country. He drove an ambulance in France during World War I, then came home and learned to fly the way most of his generation did - in the barnstorming circuit, hopping paid rides, wing-walking, and performing at county fairs in war-surplus Jennys.

What set Turner apart wasn’t just nerve. It was his understanding that the public didn’t want a grease-stained mechanic climbing out of a cockpit. They wanted a hero. So he built one from scratch.

The Powder-Blue Uniform and the “Colonel” Persona

Turner began calling himself Colonel, though he held no such rank at the time. The title came later as an honorary one from California and eventually Nevada. Undeterred by the technicality, he designed a self-styled uniform: powder-blue with whipcord breeches, mirror-polished tall boots, a Sam Browne belt, gold wings, and a mustache waxed to two fine points.

Other pilots mocked him as a clown and a showboat. But the persona was a business strategy. Racing airplanes was enormously expensive - engines, wings, fuel, mechanics, and entry fees all had to be paid for. Turner sold sponsors the one thing he had in abundance: attention. Every camera in America pointed at him.

The Story of Gilmore the Flying Lion

In 1930, the Gilmore Oil Company of California was selling gasoline under the sign of the Gilmore Red Lion. Rather than settle for a paint job, Turner proposed carrying a real lion cub as the flying mascot, coast to coast, in the cockpit with him. The company agreed.

Turner acquired a cub, named him Gilmore after the company, and made him the most famous animal in American aviation. He bottle-fed the cub, who grew up treating the inside of a race plane as home, often curling up to sleep amid the roar of the radial engine.

When the aircraft’s insurance company learned a lion was aboard, it demanded the animal be provided with a parachute in case of a bailout. Turner had a custom chute made, sized for a lion cub, and Gilmore wore it strapped on beside him.

The pair flew together for years, with Gilmore logging more air miles than many pilots of the era. But a cub doesn’t stay a cub. Once Gilmore grew past 150 pounds, a full-grown African lion no longer fit in a racing cockpit, and the flying days ended. Turner refused to sell him off. Gilmore lived out his years in comfort, and after he died, Turner had him mounted and kept him in his home for the rest of his life.

What Did Roscoe Turner Actually Win?

Beneath the showmanship was a genuinely elite racing pilot. The mid-1930s were the peak of closed-course pylon racing in the United States, centered on the National Air Races.

The Thompson Trophy was a tight, low, brutal course around pylons, flown wingtip to wingtip in turns so hard they drained blood from the pilots’ heads.
The Bendix Trophy was a flat-out transcontinental dash from the West Coast to Cleveland - a race against the clock, the weather, and fuel load.

These were the fastest aircraft on the planet, flown at the ragged edge, and pilots died flying them regularly. Turner raced in the thick of it and won.

He captured the Thompson Trophy three times - 1934, 1938, and 1939 - a record no one has ever matched. He also won the Bendix transcontinental race and set repeated coast-to-coast speed records.

The Laird-Turner “Meteor” Racer

The aircraft most associated with Turner is the one he commissioned when he couldn’t buy anything fast enough off the shelf: the Laird-Turner racer, sometimes called the Meteor (and known as the Turner Special). It was a short-coupled, powerful airplane wrapped around a huge radial engine and built for a single purpose - to round a pylon course faster than anything else in the sky. The airplane survives today, hanging in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

A Competitor With a Code

One Bendix race revealed the steel beneath the showmanship. Pushing hard and leading, Turner blew past a checkpoint he was required to round. Many pilots would have kept going and hoped no one noticed. Turner instead turned around, flew back, rounded the pylon he had missed as the rules required, then put the hammer down and won the race anyway - despite flying extra miles his competitors never had to.

Recognition Came Late

For years, Turner - the most famous racing pilot in America - did not hold a proper federal pilot’s license in the form the government wanted. He had been self-taught in the barnstorming era and eventually had to formally square his credentials as regulations tightened around the men who had invented the business.

Official recognition also took its time. It was not until 1952, long after the pylons came down, that the United States awarded Turner the Distinguished Flying Cross - not for combat, but for his contributions to aviation.

Why the Racing Mattered

Clear away the mustache and the lion, and the real legacy is technological. The racing years forced engines to run flat out across a continent without swallowing a valve, and forced airframes to survive turns that grayed out their pilots. Those lessons were written down and fed into the fighters, bombers, and airliners that followed. In Turner’s world, the show paid for the science.

After his racing career, Turner settled in Indianapolis, where he ran a flying school and an aeronautical business and taught a great many young pilots to fly. He died in 1970. His powder-blue uniform, the mounted Gilmore, and much of his memorabilia survive today, preserved by people who understood what his critics never did.

Key Takeaways

Roscoe Turner (1895–1970) is the only pilot ever to win the Thompson Trophy three times, in 1934, 1938, and 1939.
He flew with a real lion cub named Gilmore, who even had a custom parachute required by the aircraft’s insurer.
Turner’s flamboyant powder-blue persona was a deliberate strategy to attract the sponsorships that funded expensive air racing.
His Laird-Turner “Meteor” racer is preserved at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.
The technology pushed by golden-age racing advanced engine and airframe design, earning Turner the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1952.