1430 Military Time

1430 is half past two in the afternoon, 2:30 PM. The first two digits are the hour, the last two are the minutes, and the minutes are the same in every system: 30 stays 30. Only the hour needs attention: the hour is above 12, so subtract 12 and add PM: 14 − 12 = 2.

Two in the afternoon. 1400 is a common meeting hour and the most common mix-up with 0400, twelve hours earlier.

1430 sits 14.5 hours after midnight. A standard eight-hour shift that starts at 1430 ends at 2230; a twelve-hour shift ends at 0230 the next day.

Every single minute of this hour is listed on the 1400 page.

Adding whole hours to military time is a plain sum until you pass 2359, then you subtract 24 and move to the next day. A shift from 1430 that lasts eight hours ends at 2230. For a shift with a break, the work hours calculator does the subtraction and accepts both formats.

Military to 12-hour. The hour is above 12, so subtract 12 and add PM: 14 − 12 = 2. Keep the 30 minutes: 1430 is 2:30 PM.

12-hour to military. 2 PM is a PM hour, so add 12: 2 + 12 = 14. 2:05 PM is 1405. So 2:30 PM is 1430: no colon, no PM, four digits.

The common slip is writing “14:30 PM”, which mixes the two systems. 1430 cannot be a morning time, because 14 is past 12; the morning equivalent would be 0230.

1430 is said “fourteen thirty”. With minutes attached, the word “hundred” disappears; “fourteen hundred thirty” is wrong, and so is “fourteen thirty hundred”. It is the same words you would use for the number 14 followed by the number thirty.

Minutes follow the same logic. 1405 is “fourteen zero five” and 1440 is “fourteen forty”. Single-digit minutes get a spoken zero, so the listener knows a digit is there.

About the word “hours”: in speech, “fourteen hundred hours” is everywhere, and nobody will correct you. In writing, Army Regulation 25-50 says the word is not used with military time, so a memorandum reads “at 1430”, not “at 1430 hours”.

On its own, 1430 is local time wherever it is written. When the four digits carry a letter, the letter is the time zone. Z stands for Zulu, which is UTC, and J (Juliet) means the local time of the person speaking. The table converts 1430Z to the four US zones, in standard time and in daylight saving time.

Eastern Time is four hours behind UTC from March to November and five hours behind the rest of the year, which is why one Zulu time maps to two possible local times. The other three zones follow the same pattern an hour further west each.

Midnight has a second spelling, 2400, used when it marks the end of a day rather than the start. The full rules, with a converter, are on the military time chart page.