Roscoe Turner, Gilmore the Lion, and the Air Racing Legend Who Flew with a Hundred and Seventy-Five Pound Copilot

Roscoe Turner won the Thompson Trophy in 1934, 1938, and 1939 - three victories that no other pilot in the golden age of closed-course air racing has matched. He flew with a 175-pound African lion as a regular passenger, had a custom parachute harness built for that lion, and was for much of a decade one of the most photographed figures in American public life. Most pilots today have never heard of him.

Who Was Roscoe Turner?

Turner was born April 29, 1895, in Corinth, Mississippi. He came from no aviation family and had no formal training. He learned to fly the way most pilots of that generation did - by climbing into airplanes until they did what he wanted rather than what gravity suggested. He soloed around 1917.

He spent the 1920s barnstorming. Passenger hops at county fairs, stunt work at airshows, the standard circuit. He was a capable pilot. What separated him from hundreds of other barnstormers working the same routes was that he was better at the show.

How Turner Designed His Public Persona

Turner designed a custom powder-blue uniform with gold braid trim and wore it to every public appearance for the rest of his racing career, without exception. The handlebar mustache was a daily ritual - waxed every morning, turned up at both ends. He understood something most pilots then and now struggle with: the airplane is only part of what the crowd is watching. People want a character. They want a story they can take home. Turner gave them the story, then flew well enough to back it up.

By the late 1920s, he had expanded into Hollywood stunt flying. Transcontinental speed records followed - Los Angeles to New York, pushing aircraft of the era to their limits. Press coverage generated sponsors. Sponsors generated money to go faster. Turner understood the economy of air racing as clearly as he understood its aerodynamics.

How Gilmore the Lion Became His Copilot

The Gilmore Oil Company, a significant California-based petroleum brand, used a red lion as their advertising mascot. Turner approached them for racing sponsorship. Somewhere in that conversation, an idea emerged: what if the lion actually flew?

Turner acquired a lion cub, named him Gilmore, and from that point treated the animal as a partner rather than a prop. They flew together, traveled together, attended events together. A leather harness was custom-made for Gilmore. Turner then commissioned a parachute harness built specifically for the lion from a parachute manufacturer.

When asked about it, Turner was straightforward: if he had to go over the side, Gilmore went with him. He was not leaving the lion in a burning airplane. That was not a line delivered for cameras. That was the arrangement.

What the Flights with Gilmore Were Actually Like

The racing aircraft were too small and weight-sensitive for a lion passenger. But on cross-country ferry flights, publicity runs, and trips between events, Gilmore rode along in whatever airplane Turner was operating. The lion was, by all accounts, genuinely unbothered by flight - calm in the air in a way that surprised everyone who heard about it. Vibration, noise, motion, none of it seemed to trouble him. If the first thing you’ve ever known is an airplane cockpit, a cockpit is simply where you live.

Landings were reportedly a different matter. Gilmore disliked the deceleration and the change in engine note as the throttle came back. Crowds learned to give the aircraft considerable clearance on taxi-in after word got around.

Gilmore received fan mail. Children who had never seen a live lion wrote letters addressed directly to the animal. Turner was already famous. Gilmore made him something closer to legendary.

Turner’s Racing Record and the Thompson Trophy

The National Air Races, held primarily in Cleveland, Ohio, were the premier spectacle of American aviation through the 1920s and 1930s. The centerpiece was the Thompson Trophy - closed-course pylon racing at roughly 10 miles per lap, multiple laps, with aircraft reaching over 200 mph at altitudes of a few hundred feet above Ohio farmland. Crowds of 100,000 came out specifically to watch machines operate at the absolute outer edge of survivable.

The death toll was real and everyone on the circuit understood it. Jimmy Wedell, whose aircraft Turner would fly to his first Thompson victory, died in 1934 - not in a race, but in a routine training flight in an ordinary airplane. That happened often. The sky collected people on unremarkable days as readily as on race day.

Turner took his first Thompson Trophy in 1934 flying a Wedell-Williams racer out of Louisiana - a low-wing monoplane built to carry as little structure and as much engine as possible. He finished second in 1935 and 1936. He kept working and kept developing his approach.

The Laird-Turner Meteor

In 1937, Turner began a collaboration with Matty Laird, the Chicago designer who had been building racing aircraft since the early days of American aviation. Together they produced the Laird-Turner Meteor - a midwing monoplane built around a Pratt and Whitney Twin Wasp Junior radial engine modified well beyond its standard specifications. Clean through the air, fast by any measure then available.

Turner won the Thompson Trophy in 1938 in the Meteor. He returned to Cleveland in 1939 and won it again. Three Thompson Trophy victories total - 1934, 1938, and 1939 - remain unmatched in the golden age of closed-course air racing.

Gilmore’s Retirement and Turner’s War Years

By the mid-1930s, Gilmore had grown to approximately 175 pounds. At that weight, the lion was a genuine performance consideration in aircraft where every pound fights for airspeed. Turner retired Gilmore to a zoo in California, where the lion lived out his days with considerably less adventure than his airborne years had provided.

Turner acquired a second lion for continued public appearances. But the original Gilmore - the one who had actually flown, the one who had a parachute commissioned in his name - was the one that held in public memory.

When World War II came, Turner was 45 years old. He ran a military flight training school in Indianapolis that produced thousands of aviators for the Army Air Forces. He took the work as seriously as he had taken racing. The stakes were different when students washing out weren’t going home to try again - they were going to the Pacific and to Europe in aircraft that required them to be ready.

Legacy

Turner lived until 1970. Long enough to see jet aviation render everything he had done a relic of another century, which of course it was. Long enough to watch the National Air Races fade from the cultural consciousness that had once put his face on magazine covers. He was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1975, five years after his death.

Asked late in life whether he had regrets, his answer was characteristic. He said he regretted not flying more.

The historical record of Turner’s career is documented through the National Aviation Hall of Fame and the archives at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington. The Thompson Trophy era has been covered extensively by aviation historians and is worth reading for anyone who wants to understand what American aviation looked like before the war changed everything.

Key Takeaways

Roscoe Turner (April 29, 1895 – 1970) won the Thompson Trophy in 1934, 1938, and 1939 - a three-victory record unmatched in golden-age closed-course air racing
His lion, Gilmore, named after sponsor Gilmore Oil Company, was a regular passenger on cross-country flights and had a custom parachute harness built specifically for him
Turner’s signature powder-blue uniform and waxed handlebar mustache were deliberate personal branding - he understood that public persona and performance were inseparable
The Laird-Turner Meteor, built in collaboration with designer Matty Laird and powered by a modified Pratt and Whitney Twin Wasp Junior, carried Turner to his final two victories
During World War II, Turner shifted entirely to training, running a school in Indianapolis that produced thousands of Army Air Forces aviators