So this is how you seppo's learn about history...You won the second world
war, that I've heard from you on lots of occasions. Just the day before
yesterday there was a seppo here telling us that you invented just about
everything...
You're good for a larf that's all I can say...and that's probably all you're
good for!

WH
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======================================
SNIP

So this is how you seppo's learn about history...You won the second world
war, that I've heard from you on lots of occasions. Just the day before
yesterday there was a seppo here telling us that you invented just about
everything...
You're good for a larf that's all I can say...and that's probably all you're
good for!

WH
============================================================================
======================================

Hollywood updates history of Battle of Britain: Tom Cruise won it all on his
own
The 'Top Gun' star is making a new film glorifying American Billy Fiske as
the hero of this country's 'finest hour'. But veterans say that, though a
remarkable man, Fiske died without shooting down a single plane. Cole
Moreton talks to those who knew him
11 April 2004


Billy Fiske was a racing driver, a pilot, an Olympic gold medallist and an
American - but one thing he did not do was win the Battle of Britain
single-handed. Veterans and historians fear that will be the impression
given, however, when Tom Cruise plays Fiske in a new film called The Few.

"I've heard it is almost like he won the war all on his own," says Ben
Clinch, who loaded the guns fired by the real Billy Fiske and his comrades
in 601 Squadron during the summer of 1940. "I can't see how they can make a
film of Fiske's life. It was quite short. He was unremarkable, in the
context of the squadron. He was just another pilot as far as we were
concerned."

Hollywood's version of the Second World War has already shown Americans
capturing the Enigma code machine in U571 (they didn't) and leading The
Great Escape from a German prisoner of war camp (also not true). Pearl
Harbor even suggested that the RAF only thwarted the Luftwaffe in the summer
of 1940 because US pilots popped across the Atlantic to help out. Now Mr
Cruise looks set to expand on that with his own version of what Churchill
called our "finest hour".

Fiske was a remarkable character who did fly in the Battle of Britain, but
recorded no confirmed kills. "It is going to be a farce if we have the Yanks
shooting down everything in sight," says Bill Bond of the Battle of Britain
Historical Society. "The battle was four weeks old when Billy was shot down.
He made several sorties but he didn't shoot anything down, and his impact on
the battle was negligible. We are concerned."

The Few is being made by Michael Mann, director of Top Gun, the jet-fighter
movie that made Tom Cruise's name. Currently in development, it will be
based on the life of William Meade Lindsley Fiske III, son of a wealthy
Chicago family, who became the youngest Winter Olympics contestant to win a
gold medal, in the bobsleigh at the age of 16. Handsome, charming and
addicted to speed, he married the former Countess of Warwick and raced at Le
Mans. So far, so historical, and filmable. But alarm bells started ringing
when Variety, the movie world's magazine of choice, described the film's
historical content. "In 1940, expert German fighters had decimated the Royal
Air Force to the point that there weren't enough pilots left to fly the
Spitfire planes sitting idly in hangars," it said. "Unable to rouse the US
into action, a desperate Winston Churchill hatched a covert effort to
recruit civilian American pilots to join the RAF. Risking prison sentences
in the then-neutral US, a ragtag bunch of pilots answered the call." The
magazine also looked forward to "ferocious dogfights between the overmatched
American pilots and the German ace fliers".

This account prompted despairing laughter from Bill Bond last week. "It's
hilarious," he said. "Totally wrong. The whole bloody lot. They flew
Hurricanes for a start." Spitfires have a more romantic image, however.
"Recruited by Churchill? Crap. They wouldn't have gone to prison either."
And as for the idea of aircraft sitting idly by in hangars while the brave
Americans took to the skies: "What a load of bloody rubbish. We did have a
pilot shortage, but not to that extent."

Mr Bond has much more confidence in the accuracy of a forthcoming book by
the author Alex Kershaw, whose proposal was the inspiration for The Few. The
book is due to be published by Michael Joseph next year. Mr Kershaw also
wrote The Bedford Boys, the basis for the film Saving Private Ryan.

There was no crack American squad of flyers, but at least nine US citizens
did fly and fight during the Battle of Britain, according to the aviation
historian Andy Saunders. "It would be an injustice to the memory of Billy
Fiske were Hollywood to corrupt his story," said Mr Saunders in a recent
edition of Aeroplane magazine. Although a gifted pilot, Fiske was frustrated
by his own lack of combat action. His Hurricane caught fire in the air on 16
August 1940, but nobody knows whether this was because of enemy bullets or
an accident. Soon after he landed, his airfield, RAF Tangmere, was attacked
by Stuka bombers. Fiske died in hospital the next day from his burns.

Two other American pilots had been killed before him, but it was the
dashing, well-connected Fiske who caught the public imagination - or was
recognised as useful for propaganda purposes. Churchill sent a wreath to his
airfield, and in July 1941 a plaque was unveiled by the Minister for Air at
St Paul's Cathedral. His gravestone at Boxgrove in Sussex was replaced and
rededicated in 2002.

"There is no doubt the Few, as Churchill called them, were wonderful," said
Ben Clinch, now chairman of the 601 Squadron Royal Auxiliary Air Force Old
Comrades' Association. "They gave their lives without thought. It's a good
job they were there."

But his memories of the time are very different to those told in heroic
movies: 601 was nicknamed the Millionaire's Squadron because most of its
pilots moved in high social circles. "They were very aloof," said Mr Clinch.

When petrol rationing hit hard, one of the wealthy flyers bought a local
garage outright, he said. "We used to get visits from theatrical types from
the West End. The stars went to see the officers. The chorus line went to
the non-commissioned officers. We got nothing."

Mr Clinch saw Billy Fiske's Hurricane land for the last time but took cover
as buildings around him exploded. He has a print of a painting on his wall
that shows one version of Fiske's last moments, but at 85 he is bemused by
the attempts to immortalise this one of many pilots. "This resurrection is
commercial, as far as I can see," he said. "But at my age I let sleeping
dogs lie."

HOW UNCLE SAM REWROTE THE SCRIPT

Objective, Burma! (1945)

Errol Flynn's paratroopers overcome the Japanese with barely a Brit in
sight, although it was really they who won the battle. The press and public,
some of whom had fought in Burma, were so outraged that the film had to be
withdrawn.

The Great Escape (1963)

Steve McQueen played a leading part in a mass escape from a POW camp. In
real life, 76 got out of Stalag Luft III, but only three made it alive; 50
were shot and 23 recaptured. No Americans among them.

Braveheart (1995)

Mel Gibson as a charming William Wallace - not the real man who wore the
skin of an opposing general as his belt. Wallace fathers a son by the
Princess of Wales who really gave birth seven years after his execution.

Titanic (1998)

First Officer William McMaster Murdoch is remembered as a hero in his
Scottish home for saving passengers. He froze to death in the sea. The film
shows him shooting passengers in a blind panic.

U-571 (2000)

Harvey Keitel and other plucky American seamen pull an Enigma code machine
from a sinking German submarine and change the course of the war. Except
that it was the crew of HMS Bulldog.

The Patriot (2000)

Gibson again as a pacifist provoked into joining the American War of
Independence when sadistic Brits herd women and children into a church and
set fire to it. Nothing like that happened.