Laird Tuner Mentor Airplane Model

Item#: CPTLTRCTT39

MSRP Price: $299.95

Factory Direct Price: $199.95

This Laird Tuner Mentor Wooden Airplane Model comes with a detachable stand a Laminated Logo and an Inscription Plaque that adds beauty to this collectible scale model.

This Laird Tuner Mentor Wooden Airplane Model is a perfect gift for Aviation Enthusiasts, Pilot, Aviator or the people who take took part in developing this Aircraft.

Your model will be made exactly as shown in the photographs. If you would like to change this model in any other way, please visit Our Custom Model Gallery section of our website to commission a personalized model to be built.

Laird Tuner Mentor History:

Roscoe Turner was born in Corinth, Mississippi, the eldest son of a poor but respectable farmer. He came to realize that he did not want to be a farmer and found that he was attracted to mechanical devices instead. He was an inveterate tinkerer with automobiles until he discovered aircraft in 1913. Here he found his calling. When America entered World War I, he applied for pilot training but was turned down because he did not have a college education (he had reached tenth grade before dropping out). Because of his background with automobiles, he was given driver duties in the Army. As the need for pilots grew, the education requirements were lowered and he was trained to be a balloon observer. Privately, however, he was able to receive aircraft pilot training. The war ended before he saw combat and he was discharged as a First Lieutenant in 1919. With his discharge payment, he purchased a surplus aircraft and spent the 1920s "barnstorming".

In 1919, Turner and a partner formed the Roscoe Turner Flying Circus and for five years put on death-defying performances. Roscoe subsequently purchased a Sikorsky cabin plane. For a while, he decked it out as a flying cigar store. Later he used it to hold teas for society women and make radio broadcasts aloft.

As America's premier speed flyer, Turner was a multiple winner of the Harmon and Henderson Trophies, and received a special Distinguished Flying Cross by Act of Congress in 1952.

In the ten years he raced, He set numerous transcontinental records, In 1933 he won the Shell Speed Dashes and the famous Bendix Trophy. He had also been first to cross the finish line in the Thompson Trophy race, but was technically disqualified for cutting a pylon. In 1934 he won the Thompson Trophy Race, was second in the Shell Speed Dashes and finished second in the Speed Division of the MacRobertson International Air Race from London to Melbourne. In 1935 he finished an agonizing 23.5 seconds behind the winner in the Bendix Trophy Race, flying from Los Angeles, California to Cleveland, Ohio, and led the Thompson Trophy Race until the last half lap when his engine began trailing black smoke.

In 1938 Roscoe was back with a brand new Laird/Turner Racer in which he placed second in the Golden Gate Trophy Race and won the Thompson Trophy Race for the second time. At the close of the 1939 Cleveland National Air Races at which he had won the Thompson Trophy for an unprecedented third time flying the Turner Mentor NX-263Y pictured here, Roscoe Turner announced his retirement from active competition.