At low sun altitudes, contrails look like they are burning because they are highly reflective at that angle. Here we see persistent contrails, but highly reflective. Short contrail plus high altitude plane plus low sun would give you exactly what you saw.
I just like this picture so I'm posting it. It does show however that contrails are not straight when they exit the engines, but are splayed out by the displacement of air around the plane. So under certain angles they can look v-shaped, especially when they are short due to dry air.
Kirkwood, perhaps. But again, there were ZERO contrails, not even short ones -- just a blast of white. Husband is cranky and has gone to bed; when I asked him he said "It wasn't a contrail. It was a burn." He's worked around and with jets, FWIW. Also, we have often watched VAFB launches with the binocs, and seen the burn from the missiles as they go into space. They don't look like contrails, they look like .. well, burns.