How to Interpret Military Time

Even if you are never in the military, you may need to know military time: to understand a television report from a war zone, read a historical novel or interpret an international train schedule. Military time is relatively straightforward, once you understand its basics.

Instructions

1. Imagine the face of a clock, which represents half of the day. Twice around the clock is 24 hours. So as not to confuse a.m. and p.m. under battle conditions, the military counts from 1 to 24. This would make 1 p.m. 13 o'clock.

2. Remove the colon in the equation so that 1 p.m. is now a number: 1300 hours (pronounced "13 hundred hours"). Any time during the day or night is expressed as a number from zero to 2400. For example, 8:32 a.m. is 0832 hours; 9:14 p.m. is 2114 hours.

3. Hear the bells of traditional nautical time. This is based on the work schedule traditionally used on ships: six shifts (watches) of 4 hours each. A bell rings every half hour during your shift until it is eight bells, or time to go off watch. The traditional shifts were the middle watch (began at 2400 hours), morning watch (began at 0400 hours), forenoon watch (began 0800 hours), afternoon watch (began at 1200 hours), dog watch (began at 1600 hours), first watch (began 2000 hours). Ships today use modern 8-hour shifts.

Tips & Warnings

• Midnight can be either 0000 hours or 2400 hours in military time.

Resources

• 321 Know has a fun exercise on military time.
• Bell Clocks sells timepieces that chime the bells.