S-1 Airdrop

S-1 Airdrop was organized by the Czechoslovak military mission in the USSR with the task of building an intelligence network in Slovakia and the Protectorate. Its members were selected by Lt. Col. František Hieke-Stoj, Col. Ludvík Svoboda and Col. Heliodor Píka from a group of Czechoslovaks interned in Suzdal. The first seven volunteers, comprising Sgt. František Brauner, Private First Class Jan Kasík, Lt. Bohuslav Nemec, Sgt. František Ryš, Sgt. Štefan Andraščík, Corp. Josef Krejčiřík and Sgt. Ludvík Kratochvíl, started training at the Puškino Base on June 30, 1941. In the second half of August, the airdrop was divided into two groups – S1/N (Andraščík, Krejčiřík, Kratochvíl) was to operate in Slovakia, while S-1/R (Brauner, Němec, Kasík, Ryš) in the Beskydy Mountains. Simultaneously, the training of volunteer "stargazers" was organized by the Soviet Intelligence Service (group codenamed Aroš).

The first of the S-1 group to go into action on August 24, 1941, was Airdrop N. But instead of Slovakia, the paratroopers landed in Hungary. Oldřich Komberec, who joined the group only on the plane, and Josef Krejčiřík killed themselves during the landing. Andraščík and Kratochvíl were arrested by Hungarian gendarmes after the drop and imprisoned. They lived to see the end of the war.

Group R, equipped with a transmitter, parachuted on the night of September 10, 1941, near the village of Dřínov in the Kroměříž region (instead of the planned area of the Beskydy Mountains). After the landing, the members of the airdrop failed to reunite. The transmitter, hidden in the bushes, was saved by the resistance fighters, thanks to the gendarme Pavlíček and Irena Svobodová (Ludvík Svoboda's wife). However, the group gradually fell into the hands of the Gestapo (mainly due to the betrayal of Rudolf Mišutka from the Aroš airdrop) and the airdrop ended tragically. The paratroopers, except Jan Kasík, who became a Gestapo informer, ended up in a concentration camp where they were executed. Kasík joined the German army and later died at the Italian front. As a result of the S-1 action, 160 people were arrested. 91 of them were tortured and executed. Ludvík Svoboda's son Miroslav was also executed in the Mauthausen concentration camp. Irena Svobodová and her daughter Zoe escaped arrest and hid until the end of the war. After the failure of the action, the sending of paratroopers from the Soviet Union was banned by the Ministry of National Defence.