Gordon,
I do not claim expertise here, but I think you might be right to be concerned about flying it. I had my rear alternator fail this way while on the road (shaft sheared) and the mechanic who fixed it scared the crap out of me by telling me that if he could not find all the pieces of the (something, gear, shaft, not sure), we would have to tear down the engine. (This was in my '65 337).
Luckily, he found all the pieces in the oil pan, and there was no other damage.
It seems to me that flying it might entail the risk you described.
The failure happened to me while in flight 100 miles north of Wichita, so I took the airplane back to its birthplace to be repaired by the FBO there, the name escapes me at the moment. They got an alternator from Cessna in a couple of hours. It was not cheap by any means, but it was fast.
Kevin
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