More Animals Aloft

You’re wandering through the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center when you notice the parachute. An extremely small parachute. This thing couldn’t keep Anne Morrow Lindbergh aloft. So who was it for? Turns out it was made for a lion cub named Gilmore, the pet of air racer and showman Roscoe Turner.
Gilmore [...]

Roscoe Turner at left, Gilmore, and Donald Young, Turner's mechanic. Courtesy NASM.
You’re wandering through the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center when you notice the parachute. An extremely small parachute. This thing couldn’t keep Anne Morrow Lindbergh aloft. So who was it for? Turns out it was made for a lion cub named Gilmore, the pet of air racer and showman Roscoe Turner.
Gilmore is just one of the creatures profiled in a recent Smithsonian Channel special titled Animals Aloft. (The book of the same name, written by Museum archivist Allan Janus, inspired the program.)
Turner adopted a lion cub in the 1930s, naming it after his sponsor, the Gilmore Oil Company. For two years Turner and Gilmore flew around the country, covering more than 25,000 miles. By all accounts Gilmore was a nervous flier, comfortable only in his ...