Roscoe Turner, the Wedell-Williams Racer, and Gilmore the Lion Cub Who Flew the Air Races With a Parachute of His Own

Roscoe Turner was one of the most famous racing pilots of aviation’s golden age, winning the Thompson Trophy three times (1934, 1938, and 1939) flying the sleek Wedell-Williams racer. He was equally famous for his flamboyant showmanship - a self-appointed “Colonel,” a powder-blue uniform, and a pet African lion cub named Gilmore who flew in the cockpit with a custom parachute of his own. Behind the spectacle, Turner was a careful, professional airman who survived a decade that killed most of his rivals.

Who Was Roscoe Turner?

Roscoe Turner came from Corinth, Mississippi, a poor kid with no money and no pedigree. He drove an ambulance in the First World War, picked up a little about balloons and airplanes in France, and came home with a taste for flight and a genius for getting people to look at him.

He gave himself the rank of Colonel - generously self-awarded for years before any state guard made it official. He grew an enormous waxed mustache and had a uniform tailored: a powder-blue tunic, whipcord riding breeches, gleaming boots, pilot’s wings, and a diamond stickpin.

While other pilots showed up at the field in oil-stained coveralls, Turner arrived looking ready to review the troops. The crowds loved him for it, because he understood what the quiet, serious airmen often missed: the air races weren’t only about speed. They were a show, and a show needs a star.

What Were the National Air Races?

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, America was airplane-crazy. Lindbergh had crossed the Atlantic, barnstormers looped over every county fair, and the biggest event in the sky was the National Air Races, held mostly in Cleveland and sometimes Los Angeles.

Crowds of 100,000 people or more watched the fastest airplanes in the country howl around pylon courses, flying wingtip-low and so close to the ground that spectators could read the numbers on the fuselage. The marquee event was the Thompson Trophy, a closed-course, free-for-all race flown just above the deck around a deadly tight circuit.

The airplanes banked up on a wingtip, engines barking at full power, as pilots pulled hard enough to drain the blood from their heads - lap after lap while the crowd screamed over the noise. This was the arena Roscoe Turner made his own.

What Was the Wedell-Williams Racer?

To back up the mustache, Turner needed a genuinely fast airplane, and he found it in the Wedell-Williams racers built in Patterson, Louisiana. The company was a partnership between Harry Williams, a wealthy man who supplied the money, and Jimmy Wedell, a self-taught genius who supplied the vision.

Wedell had almost no formal engineering training and was blind in one eye, yet he designed some of the fastest airplanes in the world by feel - chalking lines on the hangar floor and trusting his instinct. The Wedell-Williams Model 44 was a low-wing monoplane: tight, clean, a big radial engine up front and a fuselage tapering back to nearly nothing.

Where the famous Gee Bee was a barrel - a flying engine that wanted to kill you - the Wedell-Williams was a blade, slippery and purposeful. Jimmy Wedell pushed one past 300 miles per hour and set a landplane speed record. The type won the Thompson Trophy, won the Bendix cross-country dash, and dominated the nationals for years. Turner painted his in gold and cream and went hunting trophies.

Why Did Roscoe Turner Fly With a Lion?

Turner’s sponsor was the Gilmore Oil Company of California, whose symbol was a red lion and whose slogan was “Roar with Gilmore.” Rather than settle for a decal, Turner did something only Turner would do: the company got him a real African lion cub, and he named it Gilmore after the fuel that kept him flying.

As a cub, Gilmore went everywhere with Turner - hotels, restaurants, and the cockpit. Turner even had a custom parachute and harness made for the lion, reasoning that if he ever had to bail out of a burning racer, he wasn’t leaving his cat behind. Man and lion flew together, both wearing silk, at 200 miles an hour over the American heartland.

Gilmore logged tens of thousands of miles in that cockpit and became a celebrity in his own right - more famous than most pilots. A lion cub doesn’t stay a cub, though, and Gilmore eventually grew into a couple hundred pounds of full-grown lion and retired to a comfortable life. Turner, sentimental beneath the showmanship, cared for him to the end and kept him preserved for the rest of his own life.

Was Roscoe Turner Actually a Good Pilot?

Yes - and this is the part the serious aviation men of the day got wrong. Plenty of them dismissed Turner as a clown in a costume, but underneath the show he was a thinking, disciplined professional who understood that you cannot win races if you are dead.

Golden-age air racing was brutal and killed pilots constantly. Jimmy Wedell died in a crash in 1934, teaching a student in a small trainer - not even a racer. His partner Harry Williams died in a crash a few years later. The Gee Bee pilots died. Year after year, the sport ate its heroes.

Turner survived because he was careful in the ways that mattered. He studied his engines, nursed his airplane, and planned his cross-country dashes down to the fuel stop, the weather, and the mountain passes. He flew hard when it counted and smart the rest of the time - and he made sure his parachute worked, on himself and on his lion. He also won the Bendix Trophy, the transcontinental dawn-to-dusk race, and set coast-to-coast records.

What Was Roscoe Turner’s Legacy?

After the racing years and the war, Turner built a flying school and a fixed-base operation in Indianapolis. He taught, kept airplanes flying, and became an elder statesman of aviation, using his fame to promote the everyday, practical side of flight rather than just the spectacle. The Air Force later awarded him a decoration for that advocacy.

His story also points to something larger. The golden-age racers pushed engine and airframe technology forward in ways that fed straight into the fighters of the Second World War - the lessons learned wringing 300 miles an hour out of a radial engine at Cleveland showed up a few years later over Europe and the Pacific.

Turner refused to fit the usual categories of serious engineer or mere show-off. He was both a genuine artist of publicity and a genuinely skilled, careful airman, and he saw no contradiction in that. In a decade that rewarded nerve and punished carelessness, being a living professional was the rarest achievement of all.

Key Takeaways

Roscoe Turner won the Thompson Trophy three times (1934, 1938, 1939) and also captured the transcontinental Bendix Trophy, becoming one of the most famous racing pilots of aviation’s golden age.
He flew the Wedell-Williams Model 44, designed in Patterson, Louisiana, by the one-eyed, self-taught Jimmy Wedell, who pushed the type past 300 mph.
Turner’s pet lion, Gilmore - named for sponsor Gilmore Oil - flew tens of thousands of miles in the cockpit with a custom parachute of his own.
Beneath the showmanship, Turner was a disciplined professional who survived a lethal era that killed rivals like Jimmy Wedell (1934) and Harry Williams.
After racing, Turner ran a flying school in Indianapolis and became a leading ambassador for practical aviation, earning a later Air Force decoration.