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

Roscoe Turner was the most flamboyant pilot of aviation’s golden age and the only person ever to win the Thompson Trophy three times - in 1934, 1938, and 1939. Known for his powder-blue uniform, waxed mustache, and self-awarded rank of “Colonel,” he flew thousands of miles with a full-grown African lion named Gilmore riding in his cockpit. Beneath the showmanship was one of the most meticulous and skilled racing pilots in America, a man who beat the deadly pylon courses of the 1930s and, rarest of all, retired alive.

Who Was Roscoe Turner?

Roscoe Turner was born in 1895 in Corinth, Mississippi, in dirt-poor farm country. He started out as a mechanic and a car man before World War I swept him into uniform, where he drove ambulances and worked with balloons. Somewhere in that war he first got into an airplane, and aviation became his life’s work.

Like many young men in the 1920s, Turner came home and went barnstorming. He bought a war-surplus Curtiss Jenny trainer and flew from town to town, giving farm kids rides for a couple of dollars, looping over county fairs and walking out onto the wing to thrill the crowd.

The Showman Who Invented Himself

What set Turner apart from other barnstormers was his grasp of show business. He decided that if he was going to be a famous aviator, he was going to look like one.

He designed his own uniform: a powder-blue tunic, whipcord riding breeches, knee-high gleaming boots, and gold wings on his chest. He waxed his mustache like a prize rose and began calling himself “Colonel Turner” - a rank he generously awarded to himself. Critics called him a fraud and a clown.

Then he would climb into an airplane and out-fly every one of them. Underneath the peacockery was a careful, obsessive professional. Turner fussed over his engines, knew his fuel numbers cold, and planned every flight to the last detail. His philosophy, in effect: the showman only keeps performing if the showman keeps living.

The Lion in the Cockpit: The Story of Gilmore

In the late 1920s, Turner went to Hollywood and flew for the movies, including piloting a large Sikorsky for the film Hell’s Angels. That work brought him to the attention of sponsors - and to a lion.

The Gilmore Oil Company of California used a red roaring lion as its mascot, under the slogan “Roar with Gilmore.” An advertising man realized that pairing the powder-blue aviator with a real lion would be unforgettable. So the company gave Turner a lion cub, which he named Gilmore after the firm.

Everyone assumed the cub would be a prop for a few weeks. Instead, Turner grew attached to the animal, and Gilmore grew up flying. Because aviation authorities required that any passenger crossing state lines wear a parachute, Turner had one custom-made for the lion - and Gilmore wore it.

The pair flew thousands of miles together, and the lion became as famous as the man. When Gilmore died of old age years later, Turner had him mounted and kept him. Gilmore is preserved to this day at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

Why Air Racing Ruled 1930s America

In the 1930s, air racing was one of the biggest sports in the country. Every fall, hundreds of thousands of spectators packed the grandstands at the National Air Races in Cleveland to watch the fastest airplanes on earth tear around a closed course marked by pylons - low to the ground, wingtip to wingtip, pulling turns so hard that pilots grayed out from the g-load.

Two trophies mattered most:

The Bendix Trophy - a flat-out, coast-to-coast dash across the country, fastest time wins.
The Thompson Trophy - the low-level pylon race run right in front of the crowd, the event that made legends and killed men.

These were the days of the stubby Gee Bee, the sleek Wedell-Williams, and the Laird Super Solution - airplanes built for one purpose: raw speed.

How Roscoe Turner Won the Thompson Trophy Three Times

Turner won the Bendix Trophy in 1933. He then set his sights on the Thompson, and there he wrote a record no one has ever erased.

He won the Thompson Trophy in 1934, again in 1938, and a third time in 1939. No other pilot in the history of the race ever won it three times.

For his later victories he flew a racer built partly to his own specifications - a big, powerful brute known as the Laird-Turner Meteor. It had a long nose, a huge engine, and it flew the way Turner flew everything: on the ragged edge, but calculated to the decimal.

What It Felt Like to Fly a 1930s Pylon Racer

Imagine strapping into a machine that was essentially a fuel tank bolted to the largest engine money could buy, with stubby wings that only wanted to fly at enormous airspeed.

The radial engine didn’t hum - it hammered, a deep pounding you felt in your chest and teeth. The whole airframe shook. Hot oil, exhaust, and scorched castor oil bled back into the open cockpit while the engine baked your legs.

You flew maybe 50 to 60 feet off the ground at better than 300 miles per hour - a speed that belonged to the future. Pylons rushed at you like fence posts past a speeding car. You laid the airplane on its side, hauled it around, and your vision grayed at the edges as blood drained from your head - all while three or four other pilots did the same insane thing a few wingspans away.

Turner did this well enough, smart enough, and cool enough to win the biggest race three times - and then he walked away, retiring alive and whole. In an era when the pylon race routinely killed the men who flew it, that was its own kind of miracle, achieved by refusing to be careless.

Roscoe Turner’s Legacy

Turner spent his later years in Indianapolis, where he ran an aviation business, a flying school, and an airport. He traded the powder-blue costume for the role of elder statesman, training young pilots and running a real operation. He died in 1970.

But he never lost the showman’s core belief: that aviation is meant to make people look up and dream - to make some farm kid at a county fair decide the sky is where they belong. His story survives through the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian, where Gilmore still stands, and through the racing records preserved from the old National Air Races at Cleveland.

Key Takeaways

Roscoe Turner (1895–1970) was the golden age of aviation’s greatest showman, famous for his powder-blue uniform, waxed mustache, and self-awarded title of “Colonel.”
He is the only pilot ever to win the Thompson Trophy three times - in 1934, 1938, and 1939 - and also won the Bendix Trophy in 1933.
His pet lion, Gilmore, flew thousands of miles with him wearing a custom parachute and is now preserved at the Smithsonian.
Behind the flamboyance, Turner was a meticulous professional who obsessed over engines and fuel numbers - and who retired from deadly pylon racing alive and whole.
His later life in Indianapolis was devoted to a flying school and airport, passing his passion for flight to a new generation.