AT 7 o'clock one morning last week, just 40 hours before press time for this week's issue. TIME'S editors noted the news crackling out of Moscow and made a quick decision: the cover subject should be U.S. Pilot Francis Powers, who had landed in Russia, in the headlines, and in the middle of the cold war. Within minutes, cables and telephone calls were going out of the TIME & LIFE Building in Manhattan to three continents with the message that the editors had put aside the cover that had been painted, printed and written, to make way for one of the latest cover changes in TIME history.

Washington Bureau Chief John Steele quickly mustered his reporters and reached out to Pound, Va., Powers' home town. In Los Angeles, Bureau Chief Frank McCulloch rolled out well before dawn. In New York, National Affairs Senior Editor Louis Banks assigned Associate Editor Richard Seamon to write the story. Writer Seamon had more than a passing knowledge of Francis Powers' problems in the upper atmosphere over Russia: during World War II he was a Marine pilot assigned to a combat photomapping unit.

During the next 40 hours, cables and telephone calls moved from Moscow to Hong Kong to Beirut to Atlanta as TIME'S staffers and stringers ferreted out details of the story. Acting on a tip from Bureau Chief McCullough, the Tokyo Bureau's Frank Iwama tracked down a Japanese magazine with the best-known printed description of the U2, and fired off a running English translation by cable.

While most of TIME'S cover pictures are the product of long, painstaking work by editors and artists, this week's was produced from a wrinkled, wallet-sized picture in the Powers family album. As it was being engraved, all of the plants in which TIME is printed--Chicago, Albany, Washington, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Melbourne, Paris and Havana--were preparing for the big change. When the covers were being airlifted to their destinations, said Production Chief Bert Chapman, "practically every airplane overhead was carrying TIME material."

Not since World War II has TIME'S staff executed such a feat of doubletime journalism and production. This all-out effort to report an exciting moment of history produced a story that we feel--and we hope our readers agree--is unmatched in its drama, depth and perspective.

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