Military Time Converter

This military time converter turns 24-hour time into ordinary 12-hour AM/PM time and back again. Type a military time such as 1430 on the left and you immediately get 2:30 PM; enter a standard time on the right and you get 1430 plus how it is spoken aloud.

Military time is written as four digits with no colon: the first two are the hour from 00 to 23, the last two are the minutes. Midnight is 0000, noon is 1200, and anything after noon is the 12-hour value plus twelve — so 5 PM becomes 1700. The quick mental trick for reading military time is to subtract 12 from any hour above 12: 1900 minus 12 gives 7 PM. Going the other way, add 12 to any PM hour.

Spoken aloud, 0800 is "zero eight hundred hours" and 1430 is "fourteen thirty hours". The system is used by the US military, aviation, hospitals, emergency services and most of the world outside the US precisely because it removes AM/PM ambiguity — 12:00 AM versus 12:00 PM is a genuine source of error that 0000 and 1200 simply don't have. Use the chart below as a quick reference.