Heydrich's car destroyed by the explosion of Kubiš's bomb filled with a plastic explosive and Gabčík's submachine gun lying on the ground.
On 27 May 1942, two Czechoslovak parachutists assassinated Acting Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich. The attack by a couple of Czechoslovak soldiers on major Nazi criminal Reinhard Heydrich caused a wave of terror on the side of the German occupants. The saddest symbol of the terror is the tragic fate of the village of Lidice and executions of hundreds of the most dedicated members of the local resistance movement. The target of the operation named Anthropoid was the architect of the Holocaust, Reinhard Heydrich, who chaired the January 1942 Wannsee Conference at which it was decided to murder millions of Jews and who specifically dealt in his plans with the physical liquidation of the Czech people. The decision to attack Reinhard Heydrich was adopted by the leaders of the Czechoslovak foreign resistance movement between 27 September and 2 October 1941. On 3 October 1941, Warrant Officer Jozef Gabčík and Staff Sergeant Karel Svoboda, who had completed the basic parachute training, were called to the London's Porchester Gate building used as the seat of the command of the intelligence service of the Ministry of National Defence of the Czechoslovak Government in Exile. In the presence of three other officers, the chief of the intelligence service, Colonel František Moravec of the General Staff, stated their mission: to kill either of the leading German occupation administrators of the Protectorate, Reinhard Heydrich and Karl Hermann Frank. Moravec's original optimistic idea was to carry out the operation with the code name Anthropoid as early as 28 October 1941 (Czechoslovakia's Independence Day). However, Svoboda had to be replaced with Warrant Officer Jan Kubiš after an injury during training, causing delays in the mission. Due to the weather, the pilots of No. 138 Special-Mission Squadron of the Royal Air Force were not able to airlift the parachutists into the occupied Czechoslovak territory until the night of 28 December 1941. The parachutists contacted members of the local resistance movement who helped them during the preparations for the assassination, which took place on 27 May 1942. Gabčík stepped in front of Heydrich's vehicle and tried to shoot him with his submachine gun, but it jammed. Kubiš threw a bomb filled with a plastic explosive with a highly sensitive impact fuse from a modified anti-tank grenade at the car. Contrary to the security rules, Heydrich ordered the chauffeur to stop the car and was injured by a metal fragment of the car body, which shattered the 11th rib, pierced the diaphragm and stuck in the spleen. On 4 June 1942, Heydrich succumbed to his injuries. The assassins, supported by members of the resistance movement, managed to hide and the German authorities were unable to locate them despite extensive investigations and harsh reprisals. The seven parachutists who remained in Prague (Josef Bublík, Jozef Gabčík, Jan Hrubý, Jan Kubiš, Adolf Opalka, Jaroslav Švarc, Josef Valčík) were gradually hidden by members of the Orthodox Church, Jan Sonnevend, Vladimír Petřek and Vaclav Čikl, who gave them shelter in the crypt of the Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Resslova street. German investigators obtained information only after the betrayal by Nazi collaborator Karel Čurda. On 16 June 1942, Čurda voluntarily informed the Gestapo about all collaborators of the parachutists he knew in Prague, Pardubice, Lazně Bělohrad and Plzeň. The Gestapo used the most brutal investigation methods to interrogate dozens of collaborators of the parachutists and on 17 June 1942 managed to locate them. On 18 June 1942 at 4.15 a.m., the replacement battalion Deutschland and the guard battalion Prague besieged the church. During the eight-hour fierce battle with German troops all the parachutists were killed.
