Why aren't there 0 days?

[enlisted person]

But in the military can you pronounce it with your choice of "nought" and "zero"?

What time is it?

Well, according to my watch it's nought zero zero zero hours.

Yes, but what time is it?

Well now it's nought zero zero one hours.

I will shoot you where you stand!

The US Navy omits "hours", and all American services pronounce the last two zeros as "hundred". Thus, 0000 is "Oh-hundred"; in the Army, it would be "Oh-hundred hours".

I can't attest to the term for midnight suggested above; it wasn't used aboard the CV whose quartermaster section I was briefly attached to.

I spent seven years in the US Navy and never heard of "Oh-hundred hours". My position included entering important events in the Log, and "0000" was never an entry, even in Basic Training. The Navy always had log entries end at 23:59 and for the next day start at 00:01.

Why would you skip that minute?

 

[Chaos Descending]

I spent seven years in the US Navy and never heard of "Oh-hundred hours". My position included entering important events in the Log, and "0000" was never an entry, even in Basic Training. The Navy always had log entries end at 23:59 and for the next day start at 00:01.

Not in Reactor Department on CVN-68, that's for sure. Logs ended at 2400 and started at 0000. Now that I think about it, RTC in Orlando was the same.

Why would you skip that minute?

I'd like to know that too, because that sounds like nothing I've ever heard of.

 

[John Picard]

I spent seven years in the US Navy and never heard of "Oh-hundred hours". My position included entering important events in the Log, and "0000" was never an entry, even in Basic Training. The Navy always had log entries end at 23:59 and for the next day start at 00:01.

Not in Reactor Department on CVN-68, that's for sure. Logs ended at 2400 and started at 0000. Now that I think about it, RTC in Orlando was the same.

How can a log end at 24:00 and start at 00:00?

Also, Reactor Department of CVN-68 makes me think of 1991, when some wise-ass nukes didn't want to go on deployment, so they called a TV station to state the ship was unfit for service and threatened to disable her if the cruise wasn't canceled. Bad move.

 

[Chaos Descending]

How can a log end at 24:00 and start at 00:00?

Because 2400 and 0000 are the end of one day and the start of the next. It's not magic, it's just arbitrary nomenclature. Makes more sense than skipping midnight entirely like in your example.

Also, Reactor Department of CVN-68 makes me think of 1991, when some wise-ass nukes didn't want to go on deployment, so they called a TV station to state the ship was unfit for service and threatened to disable her if the cruise wasn't canceled. Bad move.

Yeah, four guys.

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19900805&slug=1086312

Those guys were not very popular among their comrades, and were dealt with pretty harshly as I recall.

EDIT:
Here is a thread on another BBS that talks about the 0000/2400 thing.
http://gator1088.hostgator.com/~mwr/forums/showthread.php?p=3915

Here's a good post from that thread:

If your watch ended at midnight on the end of lets say the 8th of March. The time would be written in the log book as 2400 on the page for 08MAR07. You would mark through the rest of the unused space of the page with a single diagonal line and write "No further entries this page." (If I'm remembering this correctly, it's been awhile.) Your relief would start a new page for 09MAR07 and assume the watch at 0000. (Of course, this poor bastard is now standing the dreaded "Balls-to-four" watch where you might get 60 to 90 minutes of sleep before reveille.)

When we stood an underway watch with a round sheet. It would be marked with hours for 0000 through 2400. Technically, at midnight, the rounds would be taken twice, once by you and once by your relief, but one would be for 2400 on the day that just ended and the other at 0000 at the start of the new day.

Long story, short: At least for me when I was in the Navy

, the day started at 0000 and ended at 2400. The next day started at 0000; two events that occur at the exact same instant, but occurring on separate days.

Jonney

That fellows experience was exactly the same as mine.

Here's another one:

The Blue Jackets Manual states that the first watch will be 2000 to 2400 and the midwatch will be from 0000 to 0400. Any event or cycle that ends on a given calendar day used 2400 as midnight. Any event that started on the following calendar day used 0000 as the starting time.

I no longer have a copy of the BJM so I can't say if he's right or wrong about that, but it does track with what we did in practice, with the exception of the start/stop times of our watches. We didn't do four hour watches, we did five hour watches (one watch was four hours to make 24 in a day). We did 2200-0200, 0200-0700, 0700-1200, 1200-1700, and 1700-2200.

EDIT 2:
Here's the definitive word on the subject, from NAVEDTRA 14325, Basic Military Requirements.

Military Time
The Navy uses the 24-hour system of keeping time.
The day starts at midnight. Four numbers are used to
indicate the time—the first two digits indicate hours and
the last two show the minutes. Midnight is expressed
two ways—0000 to indicate the start of the day, and
2400 to indicate the end of the day. Each succeeding
hour, starting at midnight, is increased by 100 (0000,
0100, 0200, and so on) until 2400 is reached, then a new
day starts.

 

[John Picard]

^^ As it states, there are two ways, but one log entry is not recorded as 24:00 and the next as 00:00; it's one or the other.

 

[Marten]

2400 and 0000 are just different ways to say the same thing.

 

[Chaos Descending]

^^ As it states, there are two ways, but one log entry is not records as 24:00 and the next as 00:00; it's one or the other.

No it does not say what you claim it says. It explicitly says that "Day One" ends at 2400 and "Day Two" begins at 0000. It says nothing about an "either/or". It says "Midnight is expressed two ways", not "Midnight can be expressed one of two ways".

This part directly contradicts you as well.

Each succeeding
hour, starting at midnight, is increased by 100 (0000,
0100, 0200, and so on) until 2400 is reached, then a new
day starts.

 

[John Picard]

^^ As it states, there are two ways, but one log entry is not records as 24:00 and the next as 00:00; it's one or the other.

No it does not say what you claim it says. It explicitly says that "Day One" ends at 2400 and "Day Two" begins at 0000. It says nothing about an "either/or". It says "Midnight is expressed two ways", not "Midnight can be expressed one of two ways".

This part directly contradicts you as well.

Each succeeding
hour, starting at midnight, is increased by 100 (0000,
0100, 0200, and so on) until 2400 is reached, then a new
day starts.

You're probably right. I just remember my DivO and LPO were really big on that and were adamant that 24:00 not appear in the log. The new day was always logged as 00:01.

 

[scotpens]

. . . I just remember my DivO and LPO were really big on that and were adamant that 24:00 not appear in the log. The new day was always logged as 00:01.

That makes the first second after midnight unaccounted for. What happened to all those leftover seconds?

 

[Chaos Descending]

What division were you in? I think you had mentioned before, but I forgot.

 

[John Picard]

What division were you in? I think you had mentioned before, but I forgot.

I was in what was known as S7 ADP.

 

[Chaos Descending]

I see, so you were a DP/RM/IT?

 

[John Picard]

I see, so you were a DP/RM/IT?

I was a DP well before the ratings were merged. That happened after I got out.

 

[Chaos Descending]

Gotcha. Yeah, they merged the ratings a few months after I got out. I didn't even know they had done it until I went to Google, "DP Navy Rating" because I wasn't sure if "DP" was right or not!

 

[Kolrad]

No, 5.1 pieces of pie would be closer to a whole pie. It's like the difference between standing at the line and standing over the line.

Let me see if I can demonstrate how I visualize it by a count of 10 pieces:

1 10
2 9
3 8
4 7
5 6 if you round up on 5 in the first column
6 5 isn't that the same as rounding down at 6 on the second column?
7 4
8 3
9 2
10 1

Bleaghh, it's late at night, I'm not even sure I see my own logic.

This is inconsistent. In one column, you start with a whole pie (10 pieces) and count down. In order to be consistent, the other column needs to start with zero pies (which is 0 pieces, not 1 piece).

So they would line up this way:

0 10
1 9
2 8
3 7
4 6
5 5
6 4
7 3
8 2
9 1
10 0