The Tiger Is were slowly phased out after the summer of 1944 with replacements being the Tiger II. By April 1945 most tigers in heavy panzer battalions were Tiger II.
There were few Tiger Is in the west front (most battalions were in the east) and the Sherman 76mm (1 out of 4 US Shermans during Normandy, almost 1 out of 2 by the end of 44') had no problem dealing with the flank/rear armor in combat ranges.
Then there were the tank destroyer battalions of every infantry division that had lots of 76mm guns. (M-10/M-18)
I believe that most encounters between the Tiger I and Sherman in the west were in fact between those of CW forces. They had 17- pounders similarly distributed pro-rata and these were enough to defeat the Tiger from the front rather easily.
That's kind of how it worked in real life, right? Some Shermans would basically sit out at the front and get shot at while the others flanked, and the Shermans in the front would just have to pray they didn't get killed before the flankers had knocked out the Tigers.
Tactical maneuver, the principle of defeat in detail. US procedures were to quickly exploit terrain features and use their special rounds against heavy armor, used 75mms to fix, and then use the 76mm Shermans to semi-circle so they could get a shot at the sides of the panzer. The fixers also fired smoke shells to blind the panzers and then engaged in rapid fire with AP to 'bug them out'.
It also helped that in the west, the Germans were so weak in 44' that most of the time they could only deploy company sized operations (circa a dozen panzers) in a single sector at most, and most tank to tank engagements between Allied vs. German armor had the Germans being outnumbered 1.5:1 or a bit more.
US combat tactics against heavy armor read nearly the same as German tactics against Soviet T-34s when piloting Panzer III L/42 and L/60s with their weak guns in 1942.
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