Rear Armor Thinnest? Not Really!

[ScottWashburn]

I've been reading through some of the threads here and a number of them ask for advice about knocking out Tiger Tanks. Most of the advice includes: 'hit them from the rear at point blank range!'. Now where have I heard those words before? Oh yeah! Oddball in the movie "Kelly's Heroes" said them! Amazing how a whole generation of wargamers (us) have those words echoing in our heads. The way to kill a Tiger is to hit it from the rear, the armor is thinnest there!

Except it isn't true

The rear armor of a Tiger I is actually two millimeters THICKER on the rear than it is on the sides. On the Tiger II the side and rear are exactly the same. And this is actually true for most WWII era tanks: rear armor is about the same thickness as side armor. There were a few exceptions, but not many. I have no idea if Battle Academy does make a rear shot more likely to kill (it does sort of seem that way) but it shouldn't. Side and rear shots should have about the same chance.

[IainMcNeil]

Every tank models the armour in 4 directions - Front, Side, Rear and Top (If hit by air strike or a lucky artillery shell).

The stats are all based on the real attributes of the units. Its not a pure thickness calculation though, it takes account of angle and quality of the materials and gives an effective thickness. I don't remember the Tigers armour off the top of my head but you can look it up in the data file.

[peterjfrigate]

Side and rear are armour are the same in a Tiger: 80. Meanwhile, the front is 130 and there's 40 topside.