The Royal Navy's regularly updated pink lists tracked the location and readiness of ships around the world. A new working list appeared roughly every three days and fed into the harder-copy war diary record. Letter codes beside each ship identified fittings and administrative details, including ASDIC, catapults, aircraft, bulges, anti-aircraft roles, and home-port crews. The 18th Cruiser Squadron entries for Sheffield, Belfast, and Newcastle show how a compact operational record can answer technical questions that general ship summaries obscure.
Notable Point · 14:27-16:22
Royal Navy pink lists and cruiser readiness codes
A wartime pink-list page turns ASDIC abbreviations into a lesson on how the Admiralty tracked ship locations, crews, and fitted equipment.