Carrier George H.W. Bush to deploy on 1st combat cruise

NORFOLK

Rear Adm. Nora Tyson is happy to tick off a list of things that will make Wednesday's deployment of the aircraft carrier Bush and its strike group historic: It's the first combat cruise for the Bush, which also happens to be the last Nimitz-class carrier. It coincides with the 100th anniversary of naval aviation. The Bush will be the first East Coast carrier to deploy with the Navy's newest electronic warfare airplane aboard.

Just don't expect Tyson to include her own role - the first woman to command a carrier strike group - on the list of firsts. She's been breaking the Navy's gender barriers for years, and it isn't something she calls attention to.

Her stock line, when pressed about being a trailblazer: "I am the beneficiary of some really good timing."

"I feel very fortunate the timing was such that I could be the first one," Tyson, 53, said of her job as strike group commander. "Somebody had to be the first one. There will be many more to follow."

Tyson's self-deprecation may be rooted in her upbringing in the South. A native of Memphis, Tenn., she speaks with a slight Southern drawl - it emerges most when she's animated - but her warmth is genuine and her manner informal.

Days before the start of the Bush's first combat cruise, Tyson sat down in her spacious office on the carrier. Outside the door was "the flag mess" - the admiral's dining room. Two silver candelabras sat atop the rectangular table, surrounded by 18 carved wooden chairs. Large prints of dramatic moments from the presidency of George H.W. Bush - mostly from the first Gulf War - decorated the walls. Copies of memoirs of first lady Barbara Bush and daughter Doro Bush Koch adorned a coffee table.

Wearing a green Navy flight suit and brown combat boots, Tyson spoke about the former president's ties to the ship, the Navy's only surface vessel with a living namesake. Bush has made three trips to the carrier, twice while it was at sea. His experience as a Navy pilot during World War II makes his connection to the crew even stronger.

Before starting to talk about global hotspots and Navy policy, Tyson took a personal detour, sharing stories and photos of her twin blond stepgrandsons.

She seemed just as proud of the 6,000 men and women in the strike group.

"I'm real excited about the team, very proud to lead this group of men and women..." Tyson said. "It's a phenomenal honor to be chosen to do this job."

As always, the upcoming deployment is filled with uncertainty. Iraq and Afghanistan provide known missions. But there's a civil war in Libya with an internationally patrolled no-fly zone, unrest in Yemen and Syria and the possibility that al-Qaida will try to retaliate for the death of Osama bin Laden.

How would she have reacted if it were the Bush, not the carrier Carl Vinson, told to bury bin Laden at sea?

"I think it's something that we would say, 'Great, got it,' " Tyson said. "Do we normally do burials at sea for personalities such as bin Laden? No, but we do burials at sea, and you adjust accordingly. We're very flexible."

Flexibility may be Tyson's biggest strength.

"This is what I tell all of my crew: If you're not ready, and you're not flexible, then you're in the wrong business, because that's what it's about. You don't know when our schedule may change, when our mission may change. We've always got to be ready to execute our nation's tasking at any time. That's the expectation."

Over more than 30 years in uniform, Tyson has perfected the art of adaptation.

After graduating from Vanderbilt University, she was commissioned in 1979 as a general unrestricted line officer, or GURL - an administrative post that female officers often filled at that time. But at her first posting in Washington, her boss and a supportive admiral urged her to try aviation.

She earned her wings in 1983 and went on to serve as a flight officer in an air reconnaissance squadron. Back then, female aviators could serve aboard only one warship: the Lexington, a training carrier. Tyson finished a stint there in 1991, a few years before Congress allowed women to serve on warships. What she'd learned aboard Lex made her eligible to serve as navigator aboard the Enterprise once the law changed.

Tyson later took command of the amphibious assault ship Bataan, which did two wartime deployments to the Persian Gulf. It happened to be in the Gulf of Mexico in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina struck. Always flexible, Tyson's crew helped lead the Navy's response to the crisis, distributing food and water and flying civilians out of downtown New Orleans.

She knows the upcoming deployment might require the strike group to do a little bit of everything.

"It's my responsibility to be ready to do whatever missions we're asked to do, whether it's counterpiracy or flying missions over Afghanistan or Iraq or working with coalition ships," Tyson said. "Any possible mission that we could be assigned, we train for.

"I really enjoy what I do. I really enjoy going to sea. I love being in the Navy or I wouldn't have done this for almost 32 years now. It's just kind of the excitement of going out there and doing what we're trained to do, and kind of severing the training ties and being an operational carrier strike group. I think there's a sense of excitement throughout the strike group. We're ready. Let's go do what our country expects us to do."

Kate Wiltrout, (757) 446-2629, kate.wiltrout@pilotonline.com