WHILE many TIME covers are planned weeks in advance, the fast break of the news often calls for a last-minute change. This week, for the second issue in a row, TIME'S cover picture and story were prepared just a few hours before deadline. Two days before press time, TIME'S editors switched off a cover that had been painted and written, scheduled a new one that reports the week's biggest story--the unexpected release and return from Moscow of imprisoned RB-47 Flyers John McKone and Bruce Olmstead.

On hand to take the cover picture at Andrews Air Force Base was Washington Bureau Staff Photographer Walter Bennett, a World War II aerial photographer-gunner who flew on 16 missions over France with the Ninth Air Force. While Bennett made many pictures at the base, none was just right for the cover, because the two pilots were awash in a sea of welcomers. Bennett then trailed the flyers to their VIP residence at Andrews' Essex House, was the only cameraman to get an exclusive photo session.

Asked McKone: "How do you want us to look--serious or smiling?'' Said Bennett: "Serious." What Wally Bennett got was his third TIME cover photograph (others: onetime Defense Secretary Charles Wilson, Secretary of State Dean Rusk); in addition, his pictures have aided artists in the painting of some 70 TIME covers.

TO pull together the many elements of the cover story, TIME set Correspondents Jeremy Main to work at the Pentagon, James Greenfield at the State Department, Hugh Sidey at the White House, Burt Meyers at Andrews Field, and Lansing Lamont at large, while Bureau Chief John Steele contributed an overall diplomatic appraisal. In Moscow, TIME'S Bureau Chief Edmund Stevens reported from his sources at the U.S. embassy and the Kremlin, while other pieces came in from TIME correspondents and stringers in London, Paris, Bonn, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Kansas City, Topeka and Newark.

Putting them all together in Manhattan, with the help of Researcher Madeleine Bittel Richards, was Associate Editor Richard Seamon, who has written more than two dozen cover stories, including TIME'S fast-closing cover on downed U-2 Pilot Francis Powers (TIME, May 16) and the one on Admiral Harry Felt (TIME, Jan. 6). Dick Seamon, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, has an intimate knowledge of the RB-47 flyers' procedures and perils: during World War II, after training in radar and electronics at Harvard and M.I.T., he piloted a photo-mapping PB4Y-1, dodged flak and enemy fighters from the New Hebrides to Guam.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.