The first woman to fly solo around the world, Jerrie Mock, who made Bermuda the first stop on her historic journey in 1964, has died at the age of 88.

When Mrs Mock took off from Columbus, Ohio, on March 19, 1964, she was attempting to be the first woman to fly solo around the world.

Twenty-nine days, 11 hours and 59 minutes later, she did it, succeeding where the flyer she had idolised, Amelia Earhart, had famously but mysteriously failed in 1937.

A relatively untested pilot aged 38, she took off on her trans-world journey having logged 750 hours of flight time.

On the very first leg of her flight, to Bermuda, she quickly encountered problems. She realised that an important radio wire had been disconnected during modifications to her aircraft, cutting her off from those below.

After landing on the Island and carrying out repairs, she was forced by high winds to stay longer than she had planned.

But once airborne again, those setbacks made her even more determined to succeed.

Her trip carried her over the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Oman, the Arabian Sea and the Pacific, with stops in the Azores, Casablanca, Cairo, Karachi, Kolkata, Bangkok and Honolulu.

After 23,000 miles she landed safely back in the United States.

She wrote later of how she had travelled over Southeast Asia, saying: “Somewhere not far away [Vietnam], a war was being fought, but from the sky above, all looked peaceful.”

The New York Times reported: “Mrs Mock and her husband, Russell, were half-owners of the plane, an 11-year-old single-engine Cessna 180 named the Spirit of Columbus (evoking the Spirit of St Louis, the plane that Charles Lindbergh flew in when becoming the first to cross the Atlantic solo 37 years earlier).

“The Mocks’ plane had been modified for the journey. Three of its four seats had been removed and fuel tanks were installed in their place. And the radio and navigational equipment had been augmented, although as she recounted in her 1970 book, Three-Eight Charlie (a reference to the plane’s serial number, which ended in 38C), she soon discovered that a crucial radio wire had been disconnected, leaving her cut off from the ground during the first leg of the trip, to Bermuda.”

Flying magazine asked Mrs Mock why she had undertaken such a treacherous journey alone.

“It was about time a woman did it,” she said.

In 1937, Earhart disappeared without trace over the Pacific. That mystery has never been solved. Mrs Mock died in Quincy, Florida.