Word: sputtering
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Soaring over the Urals two years ago in a Russian passenger plane with a Russian pilot, Reporter-at-Large Ellery Walter was jerked from contemplating a beautiful sunrise by a sickening sputter in the motor. Realizing the ship was out of gasoline, the pilot tugged frantically at the fuel pump, got a dying burst of power which enabled him to clear some trees by a breath-taking margin, land in a cornfield. When Reporter Walter got his breath back he asked how the fuel could be exhausted just after leaving an airport where barrels of it were available. The pilot...
Unscheduled was the sudden sputter and stopping of his engine. He slanted his biplane toward the ground looking for an open space, saw only the regimented houses of Chicago suburbs. With his hand frozen to the stick, he rode the wind into a suburban street, ripped into telephone wires, stripping the plane's wings. The fuselage dropped lightly to the ground. Pilot, notes and aerometeorograph were undamaged. Next dawn he was at work again above Chicago, since the Weather Bureau lets its airplane observation contracts on condition that pilots have two planes with instruments always ready...
...practiced handmaiden of entertainment. But when "The March of Time" ends, Radio has no substitute at hand. For all its blatant claim to being a medium for education, Radio contributes little of its own beyond the considerable service of bringing good music to the millions. (Yet radiomen sputter with rage when the Radio is called "just another musical instrument...
Close Call, About five miles above New York City the engine of Elinor Smith's Bellanca began to sputter. She reached under the dashboard to turn a fuel valve. Instead, she must have loosened a connection of her oxygen breather. . . . Next thing that Elinor Smith saw was the Hempstead, L. I. reservoir only 2,000 ft. away, rushing up to meet her. She pulled her ship into a gliding angle, skimmed into a field, jammed on the brakes to avoid striking a tree. The plane nosed over. Rescuers rushed up to find the girl unhurt, walking about, crying hysterically...
Chafing at kindly paternalism that replies "the U. S. has your interest at heart" and supplies clean streets, excellent hospitals, clinics and roads, Central and South American patriots sputter ominous objections to the "Anglo-Saxon" regime...