A blockbuster movie about the Battle of Britain has flown into a storm of controversy before filming has even begun.

Hollywood megastar Tom Cruise is set to play pilot Billy Fiske in a big-budget biopic of the first American airman to die fighting for the British in the Second World War.

The adventurous son of a wealthy New York banking family, Fiske died aged 29 after his Hurricane L1951 crashed at Tangmere airfield, near Chichester, in 1940. He was just one of a handful of American nationals to help fight the Luftwaffe.

But producers of The Few, as the film is provisionally titled, are now trying to avoid flak over perceived attempts to rewrite the facts in order to give American fighters a decisive role in one of the most important battles in British history.

A synopsis for the movie recently appeared in Hollywood's industry magazine Variety. It read: "In 1940, expert German fighters had decimated the Royal Air Force to the point there weren't enough pilots left to fly the Spitfire planes sitting idly in hangars.

"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 film, directed by Michael Mann with a screenplay by John Logan, who wrote Gladiator, will also feature "ferocious dogfights between the overmatched American pilots and the German ace fliers".

Doubts over the film's accuracy have been reinforced by the fact no one from the production team has visited the former airfield in Tangmere, where there is now a small aviation museum with a section dedicated to Fiske.

David Baron, a volunteer member of the curating staff at the museum, said: "No one from the film has been in contact at all. All we know about the movie is what we have read and from what I've heard most of the facts disappear to be replaced by a fairy tale version of events.

"When you see something which is complete rubbish it really sticks in your throat. I have nothing but support for the USA but loathe the idea of rewriting history."

Mr Baron feels there is no need to exaggerate Fiske's colourful character. He added: "If you told the truth about Billy Fiske it would still make a damn good movie - although the real story, fascinating though it is, would almost end in a bit of an anti-climax.

"There are suggestions he maybe had some probable or shared hits but there is no evidence at all he actually shot down an aircraft himself before he died."

Fiske made his name years before he ever climbed inside a plane. He first came to England aged 16 to study at Cambridge in 1928. In the same year he led the triumphant USA bobsleigh team at the Winter Olympics at St Moritz, becoming the youngest gold medallist.

A keen golfer and notorious speed lover when driving his Bentley, Fiske married Rose, Countess of Warwick, in Maidenhead in 1938.

He was in New York when war broke out a year later and sailed back to England to join up.

Fiske had to pretend to be Canadian to join up and was stationed with 601 Squadron at Tangmere on July 12, 1940.

After crash-landing at the airfield on August 16 he was rushed to hospital but died days later.

His coffin was draped in the Union Flag and the Stars and Stripes at his funeral at Boxgrove Priory on August 20, 1940.

Mr Baron was one of the Friends of Tangmere Museum who raised £3,000 in 2002 to buy a new headstone for Fiske's grave in Boxgrove after the old one fell into disrepair.

Mr Baron said: "I doubt I would pay to see the sort of film they are going to make."