Military Time Chart: 12-Hour to 24-Hour Conversion Table

Published 2026-07-16

Military time is the 24-hour clock written as four digits with no colon, running from 0000 (midnight) to 2359. The conversion rule is short: morning hours keep their number with a leading zero — 6:00 am is 0600 — and afternoon and evening hours add 12, so 1:00 pm becomes 1300 and 11:00 pm becomes 2300.

The chart below lists all 24 hours three ways: the 12-hour time, the military time, and how each is spoken out loud ("zero six hundred," "thirteen hundred"). A second table covers the times people actually get wrong — midnight, noon, and the 12:00–12:59 block.

How military time works

Military time is four digits. The first two are the hour, 00 through 23; the last two are the minutes. There is no colon — 6:30 pm is written 1830. The missing colon is the main visual difference between military time and the ordinary 24-hour clock: 18:30 on a European train board and 1830 in an operations order are the same time.

Two rules cover every conversion from a 12-hour clock:

1. AM hours keep their number. Pad a zero in front if the hour is a single digit: 1:00 am is 0100, 9:15 am is 0915. 10:00 am and 11:00 am stay 1000 and 1100.
2. PM hours add 12. 1:00 pm is 1300, 4:45 pm is 1645, 11:00 pm is 2300. Noon needs no adjustment — 12:00 pm is already 1200.

Spoken military time keeps the leading zeros: 0600 is "zero six hundred," 0900 is "zero nine hundred." From 1000 onward the hours read as plain numbers — "ten hundred," "thirteen hundred," "twenty-three hundred." Minutes attach directly: 1845 is "eighteen forty-five," and 0605 is "zero six zero five."

The full military time chart (all 24 hours)

Every hour of the day, three ways. Minutes carry over unchanged — for 7:20 pm, take the 1900 row and append the minutes: 1920.

Midnight, noon, and the 12 o'clock block

Most conversion mistakes land between 12:00 and 12:59. The fix is to treat the "12" in 12-hour notation as what it really is: a zero in the morning block, an actual twelve in the afternoon block.

0000 and 2400 name the same instant. 0000 opens a day; 2400 closes one, and some services use it so a shift that "ends at midnight" doesn't appear to spill into the next date. Clocks and computer systems almost always display 0000.

This block is exactly why "12 am" and "12 pm" cause trouble on the 12-hour clock — NIST's guidance on times of day calls the designations ambiguous and suggests avoiding them altogether. The 24-hour clock is the fix: 0000 and 1200 each mean exactly one thing.

Converting military time back to standard

Going the other direction, read the first two digits:

• 0000–0059: the 12 am hour. 0030 is 12:30 am.
• 0100–1159: drop the leading zero, add am. 0745 is 7:45 am.
• 1200–1259: the 12 pm hour. 1215 is 12:15 pm.
• 1300–2359: subtract 12, add pm. 1900 is 7:00 pm; 2245 is 10:45 pm.

The evening hours are where reading errors happen. 2000 is 8:00 pm, not 10:00 pm — subtract 12, not 10. If you catch yourself hesitating at 2100 or 2200, those two rows are worth memorizing outright: 9:00 pm and 10:00 pm.

Military time is not Zulu time

The two get conflated constantly. Military time is a format — four digits, no colon. Zulu time is a specific time zone: UTC, written with a Z suffix. 1500Z means the same instant everywhere on the planet.

When the zone matters, military usage appends a zone letter. Zulu (Z) is UTC, Romeo (R) is UTC−5 (Eastern Standard), Sierra (S) is UTC−6 (Central Standard), and Juliett (J) means the speaker's own local time. So 1500S is 3:00 pm Central Standard — and that same moment is 2100Z. A time on this chart with no letter is just local time in 24-hour dress, not UTC.

Pilots live in this distinction: flight plans, METARs, and clearance times are issued in Zulu, then flown in local time. If the conversion you actually need is Zulu to US Central, the UTC to CST converter handles the offset — including the shift to UTC−5 when daylight saving moves Central time onto Romeo.

Who uses the chart most

Three groups deal with military time daily:

• Nurses and EMS crews. Medication administration records, run reports, and code documentation use 24-hour time so a 12:00 entry can never be read twelve hours off. Hospital charting usually keeps the colon (14:30); ambulance run sheets often don't (1430). Same chart either way.
• Military families. Orders, duty rosters, and event announcements arrive in military time. "Report NLT 0530" is 5:30 am; the promotion ceremony at 1400 starts at 2:00 pm. The 1300–2000 rows are the ones to memorize first — the morning rows read naturally on their own, the evening rows don't.
• Pilots and dispatchers. They need the chart plus a zone conversion, since aviation paperwork runs on Zulu and the flying happens in local time.

Frequently asked questions