Trouble Shooting Down Planes and Saving Ammo

[Omen102]

Been playing SP missions with a 109 F-4. I'm struggling to shoot down planes yet save enough ammo to continue. It seems like every Russian plan is made of Stalinium and they refuse to go down. I have been very carefully and conservatively shooting at planes and have been consistently hitting them, yet they just don't want to go down. I've tried focusing tails, wings, and engines and nothing seems particularly vulnerable or faster to destroy. I know this is not a case of me shooting too much, as I'm getting many good passes on them. I've also tried equipping 15 and 20mm pods and there is still no difference in how quick and easy I can shoot them down while saving ammo to continue flying.

[Hawk-2a]

When attacking, try to come in on an angle and try to focus fire on a small area of the enemy. don't spray straight into the tail from behind, this often does only minimal damage. Only if lucky, you might take off his elevator.

 

Rather shoot from below or above to his 4-5 o'clock or 7-8'oclock and focus his wing roots. If you get a couple of good shots with the 20mm in, it'll break off the wing quickly.

Test with different convergence settings, to find your sweetspot. this is even more important for wing mounted guns (E-7, 109s with Gunpods, P40 etc..), when trying to shoot a single point of an aircraft.

[Trooper117]

Check your convergence setting... plus, if you are engaging outside of that setting many of your rounds may be missing.

[CountZero]

If you damaged them so their engines start to smook you no longer have to shoot at them, they will be down in 5-10min.

Also its SP you can just use unlimited ammo. Online its normal that 109 or 190 shoots down 5 airplanes in one sortie, so thats your target limit then.

[RedKestrel]

Catastrophic kills are somewhat less likely in recent patches since the DM update. Structural failures happen at about half the rate as before IMO, which is more realistic IMO. Most kills will be an aircraft that simply loses its engine or the ability to stay aloft from damage. The AI will stay in a stricken craft for far longer than a human pilot would, and they're able to correct perfectly for damage, so often in real life your damage would have prompted a bail-out or a crash, where the computer can compensate for the damage and is courageous to the point of insanity :D. 

Don't aim for the wings, unless you take out a control surface punching holes in the wings won't do much, and VVS aircraft have relatively strong wings (though I seem to lose wings often enough flying Yaks lol). The F-4 has two rifle-calibre MGs which do very little structural damage, and not much in the way of cannon ammo. 

Aim for the centreline of the aircraft fuselage, and place your shots as much as you can into the engine and cockpit area. That is where the critical components are, and that way if you miss either to the left or the right you can get hits on wings, and if you miss too far back you hit the tail. Most pilots are more likely to underestimate lead than overestimate, so aiming for the nose of the craft is probably best.

@77.CountZero is correct here; once their engines are smoking black or thick white smoke (not grey of a fuel leak), their engines are going to be toast in a matter of minutes, and their performance is going to degrade substantially. If you see black smoke or thick wh just leave them alone and move on to the next plane, especially in an F4 where you have the speed and climb advantage. Nothing on the soviet side can touch you for speed especially once their engine is damaged. 

I don't rack up a lot of kills but the lion's share of mine are engine kills, sometimes fuel-leak kills, and maybe a quarter of the time structural failure. Pilot kills are like 1% of the time for me.