30 AUGUST 1940, Page 5

We have not, for some reason, heard of the R.A.F.

bombing Essen lately. I have just been given one very sufficient reason, on decidedly good authority. An English business man whose particular work has taken him to Essen at least half-a-dozen times a year for years past was recently shown photographs of the Ruhr Valley area taken from R.A.F. reconnaissance machines after several bombings. His verdict, after a close examination, was that Essen was just not there. He may have been wrong, but the story the pictures told for him was that the place he knew so well had simply gone.