Roscoe Turner, the Powder-Blue Colonel, and Gilmore the Lion Cub Who Rode Shotgun Through the Golden Age of Air Racing

SUMMARY: How showman Roscoe Turner and his lion cub Gilmore ruled 1930s air racing - and why he’s the only three-time Thompson Trophy winner.

Roscoe Turner was the biggest star of 1930s air racing - a showman in a self-designed powder-blue uniform who flew with a real lion cub named Gilmore as his copilot. He remains the only pilot ever to win the Thompson Trophy three times (1934, 1938, and 1939), proving that beneath the theatrics was one of the fastest and most skilled aviators alive. His story is where Golden Age spectacle meets genuine mastery.

Who Was Roscoe Turner?

Roscoe Turner was born in Corinth, Mississippi, in 1895, in hard farm country. He drove an ambulance in World War I, then joined the Army’s balloon and aviation service near the war’s end - and came home with the flying bug for good.

Like thousands of young men who’d learned to fly and couldn’t imagine stopping, he turned to barnstorming. Flying a Curtiss Jenny around the South, he took passengers up for a few dollars a ride and wing-walked for crowds.

But Turner understood something most pilots didn’t: people don’t pay to watch an airplane - they pay to feel something. From the very start, his career was as much about the show as the flying.

The Powder-Blue Uniform and the “Colonel” Title

Turner designed his signature look himself: a sky-blue tunic, whipcord breeches, gleaming boots, a Sam Browne belt, diamond-studded wings, and a waxed mustache. It was a uniform, not a flight suit - and it was pure branding decades before the term was common.

He also started calling himself Colonel Turner. At first, the rank was entirely aspirational - he wasn’t a colonel at all, which got him into some legal hot water. Years later, the state of California and then the Air National Guard made an honorary colonelcy official.

Turner grasped a simple truth: if you step out of an airplane looking like the most important man on the field, the crowd decides you are. It worked spectacularly.

Gilmore the Lion: The Copilot Who Flew Tens of Thousands of Miles

In the late 1920s, Turner landed a sponsorship with the Gilmore Oil Company of California, which marketed its gasoline under the “Gilmore Red Lion” brand. Most pilots would have simply painted the logo on the fuselage.

Turner acquired an actual lion cub and named him Gilmore after the company. Gilmore wasn’t a one-time photo stunt - he flew with Turner regularly, all over the country, with his own seat behind the pilot. By some accounts, the pair logged tens of thousands of miles together in the air.

Turner even had a custom parachute made for Gilmore, sized for a lion cub, because he refused to leave his partner behind if he ever had to bail out of a burning airplane. That parachute still exists today.

Carting a lion around America drew scrutiny. The humane society objected to a wild animal riding in an open cockpit at 150 miles per hour, and a law requiring aircraft to carry parachutes for their occupants was part of why Turner had the lion chute made - a regulation he turned into a publicity stunt.

What Happened to Gilmore the Lion?

Lions grow up. Gilmore eventually became a 400-pound animal who could no longer ride in a race plane. Many showmen would have sold off an outgrown gimmick - but Turner didn’t.

He kept Gilmore and paid for the lion’s care for the rest of the animal’s natural life, long after the cub stopped being useful for selling gasoline. When Gilmore died of old age, Turner had him preserved and refused to part with him.

Today, the mounted lion resides in the collections of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum - a real lion who really flew, kept by a man who genuinely loved him.

Why Roscoe Turner Was More Than a Showman

For all the theater, Turner could truly fly, and he backed it up with hardware. Golden Age air racing came down to two great prizes:

The Bendix Trophy: a flat-out transcontinental dash against the clock. Turner won it in 1933 and set repeated coast-to-coast speed records.
The Thompson Trophy: the crowd favorite - closed-course pylon racing at the National Air Races in Cleveland. Pilots flew low, wingtip to wingtip, pulling turns hard enough to gray out. It was deadly dangerous, and pilots died doing it regularly.

The Thompson was Turner’s crown. He won it in 1934, again in 1938, and a third time in 1939 - a feat no other pilot has ever matched. The trophy stopped being contested soon after when the world went to war, so his record stands permanently.

The 1939 Thompson: A Race Won by Honesty

Turner’s third Thompson win is a legend on its own. By 1938–39 he was flying the Turner-Laird Meteor (RT-14), a big, brutal racer he’d helped build around a huge Pratt & Whitney engine - a demanding airplane that punished mistakes.

During the 1939 race, Turner was out front when he cut a pylon - flying inside it and shaving the corner, a penalty that could cost him everything. Realizing his error, he hauled the heavy Meteor around, went back, and re-flew the pylon correctly, surrendering his lead.

Then he ran down the entire field and won anyway. At 44 years old, in his final competitive race, he claimed his third Thompson Trophy and walked away from racing on top.

Turner’s Legacy: The Barnstormer Who Became an Elder of Aviation

In 1934, Turner flew the MacRobertson Race from London to Melbourne, Australia, in a Boeing 247 - one of the first modern all-metal airliners. He didn’t win, hampered by navigation trouble, but he finished respectably against purpose-built racers, helping show the world that the American passenger airplane had come of age.

When racing ended, Turner didn’t fade away. He built a genuine aviation business in Indianapolis - a flying service and flight school. His operation helped train young airmen during World War II, and he ran a fixed base operation for years afterward, teaching the next generation.

The wild man with the lion became a respected elder of the airport. He was eventually awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross he’d earned - official recognition for a man who’d begun with a made-up rank. Roscoe Turner died in 1970.

His lasting lesson is simple: the show was real because the skill underneath it was real. Anyone can wear a blue suit and wax a mustache, but only one man ever won three Thompson Trophies. The flair got the headlines; the hands on the stick earned the trophies.

Key Takeaways

Roscoe Turner (1895–1970) was the most famous air racer of aviation’s Golden Age, known for his self-designed powder-blue uniform and honorary “Colonel” title.
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 copilot was Gilmore, a real lion cub named after his Gilmore Oil sponsor, who flew tens of thousands of miles and is now preserved at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
In the 1939 Thompson, Turner re-flew a cut pylon to avoid a penalty, gave up his lead, and still won - then retired from racing at age 44.
After racing, Turner ran a flight school in Indianapolis, trained WWII airmen, and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, ending his career as a respected aviation elder.