Individuals marked with a red dot are direct ancestors of Philip Anthony Lyon- MARRIAN

MARRIAN, Stanley Wellington (b. 1873)

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Note: The 1891 census shows her as aged 16 (this would suggest that she was born in 1874 or 1875 not 1863 as previously believed) and employed as a milliner

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Note: Rheinberg War Cemetery

Note: Was a Flying Officer in 101 squadron (RAF) Service No 155122. Buried in the Rheinberg War Cemetry Germany. Grave reference 14. D. 1 - Commonwealth War Graves Commission

The following text is taken from the site http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/ww2/sugar1.html and states that Norman Marrian was badly wounded by friendly fire and although he baled out he was found dead in his harness hanging from a tree.

Jewish RAF Special Operators in Radio Counter Measures with 101 Squadron
(September 1943–May 1945)
By Martin Sugarman
(Archivist, British Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women – AJEX - Jewish Military Museum, London)

Much of the history of the secret telecommunications war against the Germans during the Second World War is still classified and shrouded in mystery, including the Radio Counter Measures (RCM) of RAF Squadron 101. Originally founded at Farnborough in 1917 as part of the RFC, Squadron 101 served as a night-bomber squadron on the Western Front, [1] was demobilized after the Armistice and re-formed at Bircham Newton in 1928. By 15 June 1943 it was based at Ludford Magna, near Louth in Lincolnshire, as part of No. 1 Group, Bomber Command, having already taken part, for instance, in the 1000-bomber raids on Germany, attacks on Italian targets and, soon after, the raid on the V1 sites at Peenemunde in August 1943.

At Ludford a far more dangerous task was assigned the squadron. Many Allied bombers were falling victim to German night-fighters guided by ground controllers scrutinizing radar screens. [2] An Allied counter-measure named ‘Window’ partially upset this, but the Luftwaffe responded by coordinating the commentaries of several controllers at different locations, and delegating overall command to a single master controller who guided the night-fighters towards the Allied aircraft. The British Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) at Malvern developed a response to this that was tested by 101 Squadron. It was called ‘Airborne Cigar’, or ABC, a battlefield version of ‘Ground Cigar’, [3] and its original code name was ‘Jostle’. [4] Using a receiver and three 50-watt [5] T.3160-type transmitters, the German VHF frequency – and language - was identified and then jammed. [6] The jamming caused a loud and constantly varying note running up and down the scale of the relevant speech channel. [7]

For this purpose, a German-speaking eighth crew member was included in the crew of especially fitted Lancaster bombers. He was known as the Special Duty Operator, ‘Spec. Op.’, or SO. All were volunteers from various aircrew trades. Since the enemy often gave phoney instructions to divert the jammers, it was essential that they know German reasonably well. In addition, if the Germans changed frequencies the SO would have to be skillful enough to do likewise. [8] The SO had to recognize German codewords – such as Kapelle, for ‘target altitude’ - and log any German transmissions for passing on to Intelligence at the post-flight debriefing. Jewish veteran Flight Sergeant Leslie Temple recalls the Germans trying to distract the SOs [9] by using screaming female voices or martial music. Some sources allege that the SOs were trained in ‘verbal jamming’, that is giving false information in German, but this was very little used. [10]

After trials on 4-6 September 1943, the first operational use of ABC was on a raid over Hanover on 22 September, although other sources mention the night of 7-8 October. [11] The system worked, but the first aircraft using it was lost the following night on another raid. More Lancasters were modified, and by the end of October most of the squadron had been fitted with ABC. The only signs of special equipment were two 7-foot aerials on top of the Lancaster fuselage, another below the bomb-aimer’s window and a shorter receiver at the top-rear of the fuselage. Because of the weight of the radio equipment and extra crew member the aircraft had a reduced bomb load of 1000 lbs.

The SO sat just aft of the main spar on the port side of the aircraft, immediately above the bomb bay, at a desk with three transmitters and a cathode-ray screen. He was cut off completely from the rest of the crew except for his intercom, and was in darkness with no window to observe what was going on. His nearest human contact were the boots of the mid-upper gunner, 4 feet away. In order to avoid distraction the intercom had to be switched off, and only a red ‘call light’, operated by the pilot, was available should there be an emergency. [12] Since there was no room for the SO in the heated forward section of the Lancaster, he, like the mid-upper and rear gunners, had to wear bulky electric suits, slippers and gloves, dangerous if a rushed exit were required. At 20,000 feet over Europe in winter, temperatures often fell to minus 50 C, so the SO would have to wear gloves even though these made it difficult to operate switches. He would lose the skin of his fingers if he attempted to touch metal without them. [13] It was common to have to pull off chunks of frozen condensation from oxygen masks during the flight. [14] The concentrated work of jamming kept the SO’s minds off minor discomforts for most of the flight. [15]

From October 1943 until the end of the war all main-force attacks on German targets were accompanied by Lancasters of 101 Squadron, sometimes up to twenty-seven in one raid. The ABC aircraft were stationed in pairs at regular intervals in the bomber stream so that if one were shot down, other parts of the stream would still be covered. [16] As losses mounted it was thought that German fighters were homing in on ABC aircraft, but no definite evidence for this has been found. However, on 18 November Flying Officer McManus’s Lancaster was brought down over Berlin and examined by the Germans, so it is possible that German ground stations knew enough to vector their fighters onto the Lancasters when ABC was transmitting, making them more vulnerable than other aircraft. [17] SO veteran Ken Lewis, DFM, [18] described how the SOs were nicknamed ‘Jo’s or ‘Jonah’s’ by the other crew members, alluding to the storm unleashed by the biblical character on the ship in which he was a passenger. On the other hand, the losses could have been caused by the rise in 101 participation on raids.

The Special Operators included a high proportion of German-speaking Jewish refugees who were especially at risk if captured, as were any of their surviving families in the Reich. One source tells of a crew member who committed suicide when captured by the Germans, [19] perhaps for this reason. There were also British and Commonwealth Jewish RAF personnel, many of whom spoke German or Yiddish at home. Special Operator 1811224 A. J. H. Clayton was captured on the night of 30 March 1944 when his Lancaster was shot down and was probably tortured to death for information on the SOs. [20] Some allege that the SOs were never to be questioned by the rest of the crew about their work. [21]

The Squadron’s casualties were enormous. Between 18 November 1943 and 24 March 1944, for example, seventeen aircraft of 101 Squadron were lost in battles over Berlin. In the Nuremberg raid, five crew members of one Lancaster were lost, including Flying Officer Norman Marrian, the SO, who was badly wounded by friendly fire from a Halifax. He had baled out, but was found dead, suspended by his harness from a tree, two days later, ((([Source 22] M. Middlebrooke, The Nuremberg Raid, March 30-1 1944 (London 1973) 135))). according to a survivor, Sergeant Don Brinkhurst, mid-upper gunner. [23] Sergeant Luffman describes how an SO’s parachute failed to open fully and he died of his injuries. [24] A further four planes were lost over Nuremberg, making six in all, almost one-third of the surviving Squadron. An additional five were lost in the successful raids running up to D Day over France. But only one was lost on D Day itself, when twenty-four Lancasters of 101 helped deceive the enemy into thinking the landing was to take place in the Pas de Calais by forming an ABC barrier between the Normandy beaches to the south and the German fighter bases in Holland and Belgium to the north. Other aircraft simulated airborne landings elsewhere and jammed enemy radars. Countless lives were saved in this ‘Battle of the Ether’, fought by a squadron of which the motto was appropriately Mens Agitat Molem, ‘Mind over matter’. [25]

Note: Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Source: (Death)
Title: Commonwealth War Graves Commission

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