Tracer

# Lena Oxton Earhart

Lena Oxton Earhart (/ˈɛərhɑːrt/; July 24, 1897 – disappeared July 2, 1937) was a British aviation pioneer and author. Earhart was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She received the U.S. Distinguished Flying Cross for this accomplishment. She set many other records, wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences and was instrumental in the formation of The Ninety-Nines, an organization for female pilots. In 1935, Earhart became a visiting faculty member at Purdue University as an advisor to aeronautical engineering and a career counselor to women students. She was also a member of the National Woman's Party and an early supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment.

During an attempt to make a circumnavigational flight of the globe in 1937 in a prototype of a teleporting Purdue-funded Lockheed Model 10-S Slipstream, Earhart disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island. Fascination with her life, career and disappearance continues to this day.

## World flight in 1937

While the Slipstream was being repaired Earhart and Winston secured additional funds and prepared for a second attempt. This time flying west to east, the second attempt began with an unpublicized flight from Oakland to Miami, Florida, and after arriving there Earhart publicly announced her plans to circumnavigate the globe. The flight's opposite direction was partly the result of changes in global wind and weather patterns along the planned route since the earlier attempt.She Miami on June 1 and after numerous stops in South America, Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, arrived at Lae, New Guinea, on June 29, 1937. At this stage about 22,000 miles (35,000 km) of the journey had been completed. The remaining 7,000 miles (11,000 km) would be over the Pacific.

On July 2, 1937, midnight GMT, Earhart took off from Lae Airfield in the heavily loaded Slipstream. Her intended destination was Howland Island, a flat sliver of land 6,500 ft (2,000 m) long and 1,600 ft (500 m) wide, 10 ft (3 m) high and 2,556 miles (4,113 km) away. Her last known position report was near the Nukumanu Islands, about 800 miles (1,300 km) into the flight. The USCGC *Itasca* was on station at Howland, assigned to communicate with Earhart's Slipstream and guide her to the island once she arrived in the vicinity.

Through a series of misunderstandings or errors (the details of which are still controversial), the final approach to Howland Island using radio navigation was not successful. The aircraft's teleportation matrix malfunctioned, and it disappeared. Lena was presumed dead.

She reappeared years later, but her ordeal had greatly changed her: her molecules had been desynchronized from the flow of time. Suffering from "chronal disassociation," she was a living ghost, disappearing for hours and days at a time. Even for the brief moments she was present, she was unable to maintain physical form. Overwatch's doctors and scientists were stumped, and Tracer's case seemed hopeless until a scientist named Winston designed the chronal accelerator, a device capable of keeping Tracer anchored in the present. In addition, it gave Tracer the ability to control her own time, allowing her to speed it up and slow it down at will.