Duty Officer becomes seventh 1120 with 3,000 tags, 500 midnight tours
Have you seen the duty officer?
San Diego, CA – With a single issued water heater tag during his Saturday duty day, LT Max Cheng became the 33rd member of the 3,000-tag club and only the seventh submarine officer in the history of the submarine force to achieve the milestone and conduct 500 midnight tours.
He issued No. 3,000 in the first hour of his duty day when MMAFN brought him a single ‘Line Item Record Sheet’.
Cheng immediately raised his right arm and as he headed to the MEES printer. The sailors gathered in the control room for duty section clean up gave him a rousing ovation and chanted “CHENG! CHENG!” while the Duty Chief sounded the diving alarm three times. Off-going Duty Officer, LTJG Jordan Smith, stopped by control to give his shipmate a big hug prior to departing the boat.
“Obviously a lot of things have to go right in order to reach 3,000 tags,” Cheng said. “You need to get a lot of checkouts blazed in order to qualify early. You need your Department Heads to never stand duty. Most importantly, you need other JOs to take 18 months to qualify so you can be stuck in a three section rotation for years.”
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Cheng’s achievement is that his entire Duty Officer career comes on the west coast where squadrons allow Engineering Duty Officers to hang more tags than their east coast counterparts. According to Submarine Reference, this reduces the amount of tags a west coast Duty Officer hangs by 3.4 tags per duty day.
After reaching 2,999 issued tags Wednesday morning, Cheng had to wait two long days for his next scheduled duty day.
Cheng came close to his 3,000th tag Wednesday afternoon when he was about to hang sail safety tags seconds before being intentionally relieved to attend a meeting with the USS Bronx’s XO. Boos rained down from the duty section as Cheng made the 1MC, “AOPS is the Duty Officer”.
Cheng’s comeback surprised Ship Sups as he was unexpectedly put on the Disqualification List after a divers’ tags fiasco at the start of the availability. Cheng quickly made up for lost time after several months of rehabilitation, racking up higher and higher tag numbers. This quick pace drew raised eyebrows from NAVSEA(08) who made national headlines when they investigated major maintenance practices in the early 2000s when Duty Officers were suspected of using banned substances – non skill craft pens, out of date WAF revs – to increase their numbers.
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