Roscoe Turner, the lion named Gilmore, and the most flamboyant flier of the golden age of air racing

Roscoe Turner was the most flamboyant pilot of the golden age of American air racing, famous for flying with a live African lion cub named Gilmore strapped into the cockpit behind him. Beyond the showmanship, Turner was a genuinely elite racer — the only three-time winner of the Thompson Trophy in history (1934, 1938, and 1939) and a Bendix Trophy champion. He combined record-setting skill with relentless self-promotion, then used his fame to train thousands of military pilots during World War II.

Who Was Roscoe Turner?

Roscoe Turner was born in 1895 in Corinth, Mississippi, into poor farm country. He drove an ambulance in World War I, made his way to France, and caught the flying bug there. After talking his way into flight training, he came home and did what most broke ex-Army fliers did in those years: he barnstormed, hauling passengers over cornfields for five dollars a ride and flying anything that would leave the ground.

But Turner figured out something most barnstormers never did. Flying the airplane was only half the job. The other half was making people look at you.

The Uniform and the Colonel

Turner built himself a character, deliberately and completely. He designed his own uniform — a powder-blue tunic the color of a robin’s egg, paired with a Sam Browne belt, riding breeches, knee-high boots, and diamond-studded wings on his chest. He waxed his mustache into two perfect points and insisted everyone call him Colonel.

The rank was honorary, granted by a state governor, but Turner wore it like he’d earned it on a battlefield. In a sense, he had — his battlefield was the grandstand.

Other pilots called him a showboat and a clown in a costume. Turner kept signing autographs, because while they laughed, he landed the sponsorships. A clean-cut man grinning for the cameras was exactly the kind of pilot companies wanted to put their name on.

Why Did Roscoe Turner Fly With a Lion?

The Gilmore Oil Company of California used a red lion as its logo, with the slogan “Roar with Gilmore.” When the company signed Turner to fly its colors, most pilots would have painted a lion on the fuselage and called it done.

Instead, Turner bought a real African lion cub and named him Gilmore, after the sponsor.

He had a custom lion-sized parachute made for the cat, because authorities ruled that any wild animal flown to altitude over populated areas needed a chute just like the pilot. The image became iconic: Turner in powder-blue and waxed mustache climbing into an open cockpit, with a lion cub strapped in behind him, goggles on and wind in his mane.

Gilmore flew with Turner for years and logged roughly 25,000 air miles — more than most pilots ever will. The pair became the most photographed duo in American aviation, with children lining up at every airfield to see the flying lion.

Eventually Gilmore did what lions do: he grew to three or four hundred pounds, far too large to share an open cockpit. He retired to a comfortable life on the ground. When the lion finally died years later, Turner couldn’t bear to part with him and had him preserved, keeping him close for the rest of his own life.

How Good a Pilot Was Roscoe Turner?

The uniform got Turner the cameras, but his hands and his nerve kept him in front of them. He was, by any measure, one of the finest racing pilots of his era.

In the early days he flew the Wedell-Williams racers out of Louisiana, some of the fastest airplanes going. He later commissioned his masterpiece, working with the Laird company before rebuilding the design into his own Turner Meteor, racing number 25 — a big, powerful, low-wing machine with a radial engine you could hear coming from the next county.

His record speaks for itself:

Thompson Trophy winner three times — 1934, 1938, and 1939 — the only pilot ever to do so
Bendix Trophy winner in 1933, the coast-to-coast cross-country dash
Multiple transcontinental speed records

What Pylon Racing Actually Demanded

It’s easy to hear “won three trophies” without feeling the cost. Picture flying the Meteor around the pylons with no g-suit and no modern avionics — just a round-dial cockpit, the smell of hot oil and exhaust, the airframe shuddering and the engine screaming at full song.

Pilots banked past ninety degrees, hauling back on the stick until their vision grayed out, all of it three or four hundred feet off the ground where there was no room to make a mistake. Other racers flew wingtip to wingtip, every one of them trying to cut the same pylon as tight as physics would allow.

Men died doing this — including friends of Turner’s. He did it better and longer than nearly anyone, in a powder-blue suit with his initials on it.

The Legacy Most People Forget

Turner did something with his fame that mattered more than any race. He set up shop in Indianapolis and built the Turner Aeronautical Corporation, a real flight school.

When World War II arrived and the country urgently needed pilots — thousands of them, faster than anyone knew how to produce — Turner’s operation was already training young men to fly. The showman became a teacher. The “clown in the costume” helped build the pipeline of aviators the nation depended on in its darkest hour.

For decades the military never quite knew what to make of Turner, given his honorary rank and civilian status. Finally, in 1952, long after the racing was over, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in recognition of his contributions to aviation.

Turner died in 1970. His great racer, the Turner Meteor (number 25), didn’t rust away in a barn — it hangs today in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., where visitors can stand beneath it and imagine the roar.

Key Takeaways

Roscoe Turner (1895–1970) was the most famous pilot of the golden age of American air racing, blending elite skill with deliberate showmanship.
He is the only three-time winner of the Thompson Trophy (1934, 1938, 1939) and also won the Bendix Trophy in 1933.
His pet African lion, Gilmore, flew with him for years and logged about 25,000 air miles, complete with a custom parachute.
Turner founded a flight school in Indianapolis that helped train military pilots during World War II, and he received the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1952.
His racer, the Turner Meteor #25, is preserved at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.