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I was on on a US Navy ship, and the main display clock in combat control had two times - Zulu and a local time adjustable by an hour offset. This was obviously terrible... when we docked off India we had no way to set the correct time!

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India and a few ocean side countries in that region are at UTC+5:30. Nepal (which is not near any ocean but is adjacent to India) is at UTC+5:45.

There is no end to time zone related oddities, including the way DST and standard time switching happen in the U.S./Canada vs. how it happens in Europe.

South Australia and the Northern Territory in Australia are on UTC+10:30 as well. We also do daylight savings per state. So, although NSW and QLD are both on the same UTC+11:00 timezone for the summer months NSW is 1 hour ahead because it has DST but QLD does not!

And this is exactly why Zulu exists. Operate world wide with a fixed reference.

Same for UTC, but arguably the problem is that such formats are human-unfriendly when you travel.

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