Simultaneously, as the attack on Hill 112 was going in, the British 130th Brigade was assaulting Maltot. Three regiments of infantry backed by more Churchills had to attack across open ground to seize their objectives on the northern bank of the Orne River. After making good progress, the brigade was soon being raked by fire from three sides. Tigers of the 102nd SS Battalion on Hill 112 were firing into the British left flank, Hitlerjugend Panthers and Panzers IVs were to the attackers' front, and elements of the Leibstandarte kampfgruppe were on the right. The British were caught in a killing zone, which knocked out most of the attacking squadron of tanks. With close support from the Tigers, all the Dorset Regiment's anti-tank guns were knocked out and the British soldiers were soon streaming back to their start-line.

Back on Hill 112, the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry were launched forward into the attack as dusk was falling, and took the summit at last. A counterattack led by a handful of Tigers failed to dislodge the British from their newly won prize.

Retaking Hill 112

With the key to the German position in central Normandy about to fall, Dietrich and Bittrich reshuffled their forces to strike back. SS-Standartenführer Sylvester Stadler's Hohenstaufen Division was released from west of the Odon to counterattack and retake Hill 112. By the middle of the afternoon on 11 July, the British infantry regiment was being ripped to pieces by machine-gun, tank, artillery, mortar and rocket fire. Hohenstaufen's assault gun battalion led yet one more attack forward, and it swept away the Duke of Cornwall's, leaving 250 dead or wounded behind, including their commanding officer, on the summit of the hill. The Germans had regained control of Hill 112 and stayed on its summit for the rest of July.

On 15 July Montgomery launched Operation Greenline to expand the British front down the Odon valley. Its aim was to keep II SS Panzer Corps occupied while the British massed their armour for a major attack to the east of Caen. In this aim it succeeded. A breakthrough around Noyers forced Bittrich to move the Hohenstaufen to close the breach on 16 July. Only some 20 panzers could be mustered to form the assault kampfgruppe as it attacked from Hill 113 towards the Odon. The panzers ran into a British tank brigade and chased it off, knocking out 48 Shermans and capturing a dozen for the loss of five German tanks. The division was soon sucked into a meat-grinder battle. A day later its two panzergrenadier regiments had to be combined into a single kampfgruppe, while its panzer regiment could only muster 25 Panthers, 13 Panzer IVs and 15 StuG IIIs.

The Frundsberg Division remained on Hill 112, fighting off a sustained series of attacks. In just over two weeks of fighting it had lost more than 2200 men. Its panzer regiment was reduced to 12 operational Panzer IVs and 6 StuG IIIs. Only with help from the 102nd SS Battalion's Tigers was the division able to hold the British at bay.

The bitter fighting to the west of Caen had bled II SS Panzer Corps dry, reducing the last panzer reserve to a shadow of its former self

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