[SEE]

Maybe your expecting the spectacular 'ball of flame' or instant 'spiral downward' for visual confirmation of a 'kill'. You will still score the kill if the ac goes down later having suffered damage to cause it crash. Once you see small trails of smoke from one or more engines move on to another target. The same applies to essential flight structures such as flaps,ailerons, etc falling away.

The more accurate you are in terms of convergence, aim, etc the less ammo you will need to bring down several ac with a limited ammo belt evn though you think they are relatively intact and appear to be flying OK.

This is particularly effective on Channel Map servers where your enemy (especially if they are AI) have a fair bit of flying to do to get back to base.