Appointment in Bombay

After 21,500 miles of flying, and four weeks of interviews, the 13 correspondents in the U.S. press party were too tired even to play poker. Homeward-bound on the KLM (Royal Dutch Airlines) Constellation Franeker, they were in no mood for the kind of horseplay that had brightened an earlier leg of their Indonesian tour, when Nat Barrows of the Chicago Daily News whipped out some scissors and trimmed the luxuriant locks of the Houston Post's James Branyan, while two other newsmen held him down.

On the way out in another KLM Constellation,* they had sat out the ordeal of a dangerous, 3,200-mile over-water flight, made necessary by India's pro-Indonesian ban on landings by Dutch aircraft. For the trip back, Foreign Editor Charles Gratke of the Christian Science Monitor cabled Prime Minister Pandit Nehru and got permission for the newsmen to stop at Calcutta and Bombay, with a side jog north to New Delhi. At the Indian capital, they found Nehru too busy for a press conference. So most of the newsmen went shopping, bought jewelry and Kashmir shawls to take home to their wives, teakwood boats for their children. That evening they dug out their last clean shirts for cocktails with U.S. Ambassador Loy Henderson.

Henderson, who knew many of the newsmen from the days when he ran the State Department's Near East desk, talked over old times with the New York Times's Bertram Hulen (veteran of 23 years on the State Department beat), TIME'S Jack Werkley, Business Week's Thomas Falco, WOR's Pulitzer-prizewinning H. R. Knickerbocker.

Next morning the correspondents got up early for a 6 a.m. takeoff. Heading southwest for Bombay, the Franeker had 32 crewmen and passengers aboard, besides the 13 correspondents.**

Three hours later, rocking through the driving rain and ghostlike clouds of a monsoon storm, Captain Chris van der Vaart, one of KLM's most experienced pilots, nosed down. When the plane broke through the murk, they could glimpse the sea and the approaches of Bombay's Santa Cruz airport. As the pilot headed northeast to circle for a landing, the plane was again swallowed by the low-hanging mists. Suddenly its left wing brushed a hidden, tree-covered, 674-foot hill, ripped along its slope as the pilot frantically tried to gain altitude. Some 20 feet from the top, the Franeker's nose plunged into the ground and the Constellation blew to bits with Van der Vaart's severed hand still on the controls. All 45 passengers were killed. It was the worst aviation disaster in India's history.

As the U.S. press spread the news of its family tragedy in black headlines, Ambassador Henderson had the task of identifying the bodies of his night-before guests. Most of their faces were readily recognizable, their expressions calm, as if death had come with merciful suddenness.

From boyhood, handsome, wry John Gerard (Jack) Werkley wanted to be a reporter. Born 36 years ago in Paterson, N.J., at 17 he got his chance on the Paterson Evening News. Later, at the Missouri School of Journalism, he unofficially majored in the lives of great newsmen. Then, for seven years, he was a reporter for the Associated Press and the Oklahoma City Daily Oklahoman.

Werkley had a private pilot's license and, as a World War II Navy intelligence officer on a Pacific aircraft carrier, went along on several combat missions. Later, as a New York Herald Tribune staffer, he crossed the country in the Trib's "Flying Newsroom" to cover the Texas City disaster, the 1946 coal strike, the meat shortage. While covering the United Nations and later the State Department, he showed a talent for asking sharp questions in a friendly way. From the Herald Tribune's Washington staff Werkley came to TIME in October 1948, as a contributing editor of National Affairs. The last story he wrote, before saying goodbye to his wife and 20-month-old son, was about a plane crash off Puerto Rico.

*Which, on its return trip, crashed mysteriously off Bari, Italy, killing 33 passengers and crew.

** The others: the Denver Post's Fred Colvig, Mutual Broadcasting System's Elsie Dick, Pulitzer-prizewinning S. Burton Heath of the Newspaper Enterprise Association, the San Francisco Chronicle's Vincent Mahoney, the Portland Oregonian's George Moorad, Scripps-Howard's William Newton.

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