Roscoe Turner, the Lion Named Gilmore, and the Three Thompson Trophies That Made the Last Great Air Racer of the Golden Age

Roscoe Turner won the Thompson Trophy at the National Air Races three times - in 1934, 1938, and 1939 - a record no pilot has equaled in the more than eighty years since. He was the most celebrated air racer of his era, equally famous for his flying ability and for the larger-than-life persona he built around it, which included a traveling lion named Gilmore.

From Mississippi Farmhand to Barnstormer

Turner was born in 1895 in Corinth, Mississippi, into a family with little money. He worked farms and odd jobs before World War I gave him a way out. He served in a support role with the Army - close enough to aircraft to develop an obsession, but not yet in the cockpit.

When the war ended, the government auctioned surplus trainers at steep discounts. Turner scraped together enough to buy a Curtiss Jenny and began barnstorming county fairs and civic events across the South and Midwest. He learned his trade in front of audiences who couldn’t describe what they were watching but felt it anyway.

He had a rare instinct for performance. He understood that people didn’t drive an hour down a dirt road for precise flying - they came to feel something. Turner gave them that every time.

The Uniform as Brand Identity

Turner designed a personal uniform: deep blue with gold trim, pilot’s wings on the chest, a cut that suggested military precision despite no formal military connection. He wore variations of it for the rest of his career.

It wasn’t vanity. The uniform communicated authority before a single word was spoken. It told every crowd that the man wearing it was serious about what he did. In an era when aviation was still working to earn public trust, that signal mattered.

Gilmore the Lion: The Publicity That Became a Legend

Around 1930, Turner acquired a lion cub and named him Gilmore, after the Gilmore Oil Company of California, one of his primary sponsors. The naming was deliberate: a man flying cross-country with a lion in the cockpit was a story that sold newspapers, and in the 1930s, newspapers were everything.

Gilmore flew in the cockpit alongside Turner, fitted with a custom harness. The photographs went everywhere - newsreels, wire services, magazines. Gilmore even carried his own passport for crossing state lines and wore a custom-fitted parachute harness made specifically for him. Turner had him insured for a substantial sum.

When Gilmore grew too large for cockpit travel, Turner kept him as a ground companion at events and airshows, arriving with the lion on a leash. Gilmore eventually retired to the Memphis Zoo, closing out his days as probably the most aviation-connected lion in history.

Every element - the uniform, the lion, the persona - fed the same story. And the story brought people to aviation at a time when aviation needed all the friends it could get.

The Thompson Trophy and What It Demanded

The Thompson Trophy race at the National Air Races in Cleveland was the crown jewel of American aviation competition: closed-course pylon racing at full throttle, a roughly triangular loop with tall pylons at each corner, flown low and fast with the crowd close enough to see individual faces in the turns.

The margins were permanent in both directions. Coming wide on a turn cost lap time. Coming too tight could cost the wing. Everybody on the course understood both facts.

Turner’s 1934 Thompson Trophy victory came in a Wedell-Williams Model 44, built by Jimmy Wedell and Harry Williams - clean, fast, and unforgiving aircraft. Turner averaged approximately 240 mph over the course, performance that matched front-line military fighters of the era. Jimmy Wedell had died in a crash the previous year, 1933, and the race ran with that shadow over it.

The Laird-Turner Meteor and Back-to-Back Titles

By the late 1930s, Turner had a purpose-built machine: the Laird-Turner Meteor, designation LTR-14, built by Matty Laird around Turner’s specific requirements and his style in the turns. It carried a Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp Junior up front with carefully faired fixed undercarriage and a deep-bellied fuselage that looked fast even standing still on the ramp.

Turner won the Thompson Trophy in the Meteor in 1938, then again in 1939. The 1939 race ran in early September, with Turner averaging close to 280 mph through the pylon turns, G-forces pressing him into the seat on every corner.

Three Thompson Trophies. No other pilot had done it. No other pilot has done it since.

The End of the Golden Age

The 1939 Thompson Trophy turned out to be the last before the war. The National Air Races were suspended in 1942 - the military needed the airspace, the fuel, and the men. The golden age of air racing, that brief window between the wars, closed.

What had taken decades of development happened in four years of wartime production. When the Thompson Trophy briefly returned in the late 1940s, jet aircraft were already running alongside the old piston racers. The world had moved on. Turner understood it the way good pilots understand when the airplane is telling them something.

Building Pilots in Indianapolis

Turner relocated to Indianapolis and founded the Roscoe Turner Aeronautical Corporation, a flight school and fixed base operation. He redirected the same precision and drive that had defined his racing career into teaching people to fly. The energy was identical; the application was different.

He spent his later decades as an elder statesman of aviation - airshows, industry events, Congressional testimony on aviation matters, always in the uniform, always with the authority of someone who had done the thing at the highest level.

Roscoe Turner died in June 1970 at age 74.

Why His Record Still Stands

Turner’s achievement is easy to state and difficult to fully appreciate. Three Thompson Trophy victories. Speeds that matched military hardware. A career that ran from barnstorming Curtiss Jennys to jet-age Congressional testimony.

The deeper significance is harder to quantify. He understood, at an instinctive level, that aviation needed to be loved, not just used. That people had to feel something when they watched an airplane go past. That the pilot was part of the story.

He built a persona so aviation had a face. He flew fast so the face had something to stand behind. He brought a lion because he knew that story would travel further than any press release.

Key Takeaways

Roscoe Turner (born 1895, Corinth, Mississippi) won the Thompson Trophy in 1934, 1938, and 1939 - a record unmatched for more than 80 years.
His 1934 victory in a Wedell-Williams Model 44 averaged approximately 240 mph, competitive with contemporary military fighters.
His 1938 and 1939 titles came in the purpose-built Laird-Turner Meteor (LTR-14), powered by a Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp Junior and designed specifically around his racing style.
Gilmore the lion, named after sponsor Gilmore Oil Company, flew in the cockpit with Turner on cross-country flights and became one of aviation’s most effective public-relations stories.
The 1939 Thompson Trophy was the last before the races were suspended in 1942 for World War II, effectively ending the golden age of American closed-course air racing.