Timelines · WW2 aircraft
The year on each one is the year it became central to the war — not its first flight. Every page explains the aircraft plainly, then its engine, then its weapons and what it did that nothing else could.
Flying artillery: it dived almost vertically onto the target, and the army below moved as fast as it did.
The most-produced fighter ever, and the yardstick every Allied fighter was measured against.
The interceptor that, with the Hurricane and radar, denied the Luftwaffe the sky over Britain.
An armoured bath with wings, built in greater numbers than any other military aircraft in history.
Range and agility bought by leaving everything else out — it let carriers reach further than anyone thought possible.
Daylight bombing from 25,000 feet in a box of guns — and the proof that bombers alone could not win.
No guns at all. Sicily, Normandy, the Hump, Bastogne — the war’s logistics ran on two Twin Wasps.
A two-stage Merlin in the cleanest airframe of the war: it flew to Berlin and back, and broke the Luftwaffe in a spring.
The first jet fighter to fight — 190 km/h faster than a Mustang, too late and too few to matter, and the end of the propeller.
Pressurised, turbocharged, remote-gunned: it burned Japan’s cities and dropped the two atomic bombs.