I've read the DateFormatting guide and I'm still not able to get a working formatter.
NSString *string = @"0901Z 12/17/09";
//This is a sample date. The Z stands for GMT timezone
//The 0901 is 09h 01m on a 24 hour clock not 12.
//As long as I can get the hours/min & date from the string I can deal with the time zone later
NSDateFormatter *dateFormat = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormat setDateFormat:@"hhmm'Z' MM/dd/yy"];
NSDate *date = [dateFormat dateFromString:string];