In the long and noble tradition of men and women seeking to circumnavigate the world by air, none has fallen so tragically short of his target as the British tree surgeon Martin Bromage.
He set off yesterday morning from Gloucestershire Airport at Staverton in a microlight for the 11,000-mile round-the-world trip and did not even make it to France before he crashed into the English Channel five hours later.
The coastguard at Dover have since revealed that Bromage made a series of calls to a French airfield as fog closed in. Seconds later he lost radio contact and crashed into the sea. A spokesman for the coastguard said: ‘His aircraft was very well equipped for all emergencies and carried a life-raft and life-jacket but sadly none of it seems to have helped him.’
Bromage, 49, married with two sons, had set off on Monday morning with the sort of bravado displayed by countless solo fliers down the years, going back to Amelia Earhart, who herself disappeared on a round-the-world flight 72 years ago (though on that occasion she was accompanied by a navigator).
Aiming to raise £150,000 for the soldiers’ charity Help for Heroes, he was expecting the trip to last eight weeks. ‘I have done a few adventurous trips in Europe in the microlight and I just thought to myself, why not push it that bit further?’ he said.
