Dose any one know if there is a skerrick of truth in this or is me old mate taking the piss?
Certainly potentially lethal in a DC3 with the props so close to the pilots. Back in the early Fifties however, a Stratocruiser flying to or from Honolulu (I forget which) had a runaway prop on the port outer (No 1). A runaway prop was a deadly serious matter as the drag was enormous and the prop uncontrollable.
An immediate action is reduce the true air speed by descending to a lower altitude and slowing up to near minimum control speed. This may or may not bring back the propeller into its governing range where the prop could be feathered eventually. An interesting prospect if IMC or at night on instruments. In fact I experienced one personally shortly after lift off in a Convair 440 where a broken oil line caused a runaway prop from 2400 to 3200 rpm in six seconds. Fortunately we managed to feather the prop so I guess it was an overspeed rather than a true uncontrollable runaway.
The Stratocruiser pilot was unable to feather it despite reducing speed. The reduction gear surrounding the prop shaft began to glow with heat. The pilot decided to try to get rid of the prop and used a method involving intermittent cutting off the oil supply to the prop by means of the fire wall shut-off handle. This was known as "freezing." Eventually the prop shaft would seize and fling off the propeller.
The problem was the departing prop may hit the adjacent engine and prop. If that happened there could be catastrophic vibration causing the aircraft to shake itself to destruction.
He then thought of an ingenious idea. Obviously this type of scenario was one that was well thought out in his mind from previous knowledge of the dangers of runaway propellers. He first deliberately feathered the propeller of the adjacent engine (port inner) to the runaway prop, then while intermittently "freezing" the oil supply to No 1 he carefully observed its spinning prop. In those days aircraft carried flight engineers so he was obviously involved with the process and CRM and TEM were futuristic terms - you just did your job professionally without all the fancy psycho-babble warm and fuzzy terms of today.
Soon the spinning prop began to wobble on the shaft indicating it was near to flinging off. The prop reduction gear housing now glowed red hot and when he judged the moment right, the pilot gave a huge bunt (or maybe be a huge pull), depending on the direction of rotation of the prop, to impart a severe gyroscopic effect on the windmilling prop.
The prop broke free of its reduction gear and at the same time the pilot banked hard right and the prop flew under the fuselage. He had used gyroscopic effect of the windmilling prop to steer, as it were, the prop in the safest direction; which was under the banking aircraft.
As the prop broke away it clipped one of the feathered prop blades of the adjacent No 2 engine and damaged it. This is exactly what the pilot feared might happen which is why he had earlier feathered that engine as a precaution. This was splendid airmanship at its best. The pilot then was on two engines on one side because the No 2 prop was too seriously damaged to risk starting its engine. The pilot then had no choice but to let the aircraft drift down using the two remaining engines until at 50 feet above the Pacific he was able to fly in ground effect for over 500 miles. As fuel was consumed and the aircraft got lighter he was able to reduce power on the two live engines and even gradually climb to 200 feet above the water. The aircraft landed safely at its destination after several hours across the Pacific on two engines.
I recall this incident was described in one of the early Aviation Safety Digest magazines published by the original Australian Department of Civil Aviation in those days. Incidently those magazines were far more readable in terms of true flight safety stories than the current Flight Safety Australia mag which is mainly advertising copy and very little serious flight safety content. Cost recovery had diminished the quality. A pity.