I've managed to get back up right a few times too. I wrote it off as luck but maybe...
The thing I miss most about the old tanks (the WW2 style) was getting in one at the top of Duckwing Mountain and driving over the edge.
You would tumble ass over tea kettle and roll all the way to the bottom. The nice thing was that about 80% of the time you could get the tank back on it's treads. Sometimes it would take a while, but if you were with someone else you could get each other unstuck from almost anything.
The top of Duckwing was shaped differently too. It was a bowl shape made by an indentation. It took as much skill to land there as on the lower deck of a carrier. You could get a bunch of tanks and play king of the mountain; trying to push each other over the edge. Once you quit tumbling you could drive around the foot of the south side of the mountain and drive back up the ridges to the top. There were only a couple of viable paths you could take because you had to avoid all of the places that were too steep or else you would flip over backwards.
Inevitably some reds would come and try strafing you. Hmmm... It didn't seem like there were as many people who could take down planes with tanks then.