This is an armour angling tactic that you can use in battle on certain tanks. Its especially helpful on tanks that are unable to sidescrape regularly due to their frontal armour shape.
Note that very very few tanks can actually effectively reverse sidescrape, due to needing the right kind of turret placement on the hull, decent side/rear gun depression, and the correct rear hull shape.
For example, the IS-3 can reverse sidescrape very effectively, but the IS-5 can’t, purely due to the shape of the hull’s rear armour plate
Reverse Sidescraping
Reverse sidescraping is just sidescraping, but instead of having your frontal armour hugging the building, its your rear armour.
Basically you turn the tank all the way around, so the rear hull armour is facing the hard cover that you sidescrape from. Then you drive (at an angle) away from that hard cover, with your turret faced towards the enemy, and shoot them.
This is shown in images below.
What not to do:
Don’t worry about your rear armour being exposed. The whole point of reverse sidescraping is to be more effective in your armour profile.
In this case, its your side armour that matters, what the enemy sees when you reverse sidescrape is your turret, and your side armour.
You MUST prioritize your side armour angle, your rear plate showing literally doesn’t matter, because you’re only poking out for a split second to shoot the enemy, then you reverse back into cover.
On most reverse sidescrapers it is impossible to fully hide the rear while being able to shoot the enemy. So if you are more worried about your rear armour plate being hidden, you are going to over turn your hull. Over turning the hull will result in the side armour becoming penetrable, and the majority of what the enemy sees is the side armour.
This is how a reverse sidescrape should look on your screen.
Again, don’t worry about your rear armour, pay more attention to the angle of your sides.
This is how it would look from an aerial perspective.
Don’t try to look at your tank from above during a battle.
This is just a visual representation to show how the tank is angled in accordance with the building and where the enemy is (where the gun is pointing towards).
This is what the enemy will see. In the case of most reverse sidescrapers, the reason they are doing it is because their frontal armour doesn’t allow for regular sidescraping.
In this case, the IS-3 is far more effective in this position compared to a regular sidescrape.
Over-angling
The T-22 Medium is the only tank that can over-angle its hull while reverse sidescraping. In all other tanks, you should never over-angle, as it will result in enemy tanks penetrating you.
Over-angling is when you turn the hull past the 70 degree auto-ricochet point, meaning that AP and APCR shells will no longer ricochet off.
The reason the T-22 can do this is because its side armour is not flat, its angled inwards like a V-shape, so its able to maintain that auto-ricochet angling, even though its hull is turned past 70 degrees.
You can see that the T-22’s hull is turned much further than the IS-3’s hull, and this does allow it to hide the rear armour plate.
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