About the Dossier
A field guide to the machines that contested the skies between 1939 and 1945 — compiled for enthusiasts, modellers, and the merely curious.
Contrails & Cordite is an enthusiast project — a reference dossier cataloguing thirty-two of the most consequential warplanes of the Second World War. Each entry pairs technical specification with a compact operational history, cross-referenced against theatre, operator nation, and contemporaries.
It is not exhaustive. It is opinionated. Omissions are deliberate; inclusions are earned.
Photographic material is drawn from the public domain via Wikimedia Commons, the Imperial War Museums (IWM), the U.S. National Archives (NARA), and the Bundesarchiv. Technical specifications are cross-checked against standard references including Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft, William Green’s Warplanes of the Second World War, and manufacturer’s data where available.
Where figures conflict between sources, we’ve favoured the consensus published by museum archives over wartime propaganda or post-war claims.
Aircraft photographs are loaded via Wikimedia Commons’ stable Special:FilePath endpoint. If a specific image fails to resolve, the filename can be swapped in lib/aircraft.ts — any direct image URL will render without reconfiguration.
The treatment applied to images (a modest sepia and contrast push) is stylistic. The originals, in their full fidelity, remain one click away at the source.
Built with Next.js 14 (App Router), TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS. Typography courtesy of Oswald, Playfair Display, Inter, and JetBrains Mono via Google Fonts. No client-side state beyond the filter controls on the aircraft index.
The site is statically generated — every aircraft detail page is pre-rendered at build time. It will run anywhere Next.js runs.
To the archivists at the IWM, NARA, and the Bundesarchiv; to the volunteers who have tagged, captioned, and catalogued tens of thousands of wartime photographs on Wikimedia Commons; and to the warbird preservation community keeping these machines airworthy — this project stands on your shoulders.
And to the crews, ground and air, whose labour and losses these pages only dimly reflect.
Lest we forget.
— The Editors