The skin in your thread is that of VMA-211, the Wake Island Avengers and actually has a pretty interesting history that’s not very well known outside the Marine Corps.
Originally, VMA-211 was commissioned in 1937 as Marine Fighting Squadron 4 (VF-4M) flying Grumman F2Fs and F3Fs. I mention this primarily as a point of interest as the recently released Aeroplane Heaven F3F-2 includes a livery based on the restored F3F located at the Museum of Naval Aviation in the colors of the original squadron. The AH version does make the error of painting “Navy” instead of “Marines” on the empennage, but the original squadron insignia of a plunging red lion on a green field can be seen on the vertical stab.
The squadron’s signature action occurred at the dawn of the US’s involvement in WWII. Based on the tiny but strategically important atoll of Wake, 12 of the squadron’s 24 aircraft joined the 1st Marine Defense Battalion (think mobile coastal defensive guns here) in preparing a defense should the US go to war with Japan.
They wouldn’t have long to wait.
Beginning with initial air attacks on 8 December 1941 (IIRC the same day as Pearl Harbor due to the International Date Line) which destroyed 7 of the squadron’s aircraft on the ground (there was no form of early warning equipment on the island; air patrols were the sole source of spotting the enemy), VMF-211 spent the next two weeks or so flying their 5 increasingly beat up and cobbled together Wildcats in defense of the island.
Finally, when the last of the Wildcats became unflyable, the Marines of VMF-211 joined their defense battalion brethren as well as a number of heroic civilian contractors, (present on the island to work on the Pan Am facilities also located there) to repulse attempts by Japanese Navy to take the island chain.
Eventually, not long after the final ominous message, “Enemy on island. Situation in doubt.” was sent by Wake’s commander, the engaged Marines, sailors, and civilians were ordered to lay down their weapons and surrender to the Japanese forces. The date was 23 December, 1941.
In one of several ironies of the event, most Marines fighting at the time felt that they still had the capacity to resist. However, cut communications lines to the atoll’s headquarters gave the commander the impression that all possible resistance had been exhausted.
The Battle of Wake Island was really quite small in the great scheme of things as far as land and air battles go and is largely forgotten by most people. At the time however, it was one of the few bright points of defiance in the otherwise endless stream of dismal news coming out of the Pacific.
Much of the remainder of VMF-211 met a similarly dire fate in the initial attacks on Pearl Harbor where almost the entire squadron was destroyed. It wasn’t until several months later that the squadron was once again made whole and redeployed to the Palmyra Atoll where it variously flew Brewster Buffalos, Wildcats, and eventually Corsairs. It was during this time that the squadron adopted its “Wake Island Avengers” title in honor of the squadron’s Marines lost and captured on Wake. The original red lion in the squadron’s insignia was now shown jumping over the Wake atoll, first on a white, then later gold background.
Before the end of the war, the newly named Avengers would see service in the Treasury-Bougainville Campaign, the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, the Northern Solomons, the Battle of Leyte Gulf, and the Southern Philippines.
Following the war the Avengers, now re-designated VMA-211 after its transition to AD-4N Skyraiders served both in the US and abroad, but did not take part directly in the Korean War AFAIK.
The next time the Avenger name would come to the fore was during the Viet Nam conflict. Here 211 served several tours flying the A-4 Skyhawk, both out of Chu Lai and later Bien Hoa airbases primarily providing Close Air Support to soldiers and Marines fighting in the South. It’s here that you first start to see the “star and meatball” insignia painted somewhere on the squadron’s aircraft as an additional nod to its WWII ancestry.
The Avengers continued to fly the A-4 up until sometime in 1990, when they began transitioning to the AV-8B Harrier II. I believe 211 were the first squadron to receive the Night Attack variant, though over time they relinquished a portion of those to other squadrons. In the end, most West Coast squadrons fielded a mix of the Day and Night Attack types.
The next chapter in the Avenger’s history recalls some of the somber notes of its founding. 211, now flying a mix of Night Attack and radar equipped AV-8B II Plus versions of the Harrier, served extensively in support of operations in the Persian Gulf, flying both off LHD class assault carriers and also land bases in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
It was on one of these deployments to Camp Bastion, Afghanistan in April 2012 that Taliban soldiers, disguised in stolen uniforms, infiltrated the base and succeeded in destroying six of 211’s Harriers, severely damaging an additional two, and killing the Avenger’s Commanding Officer and one of his maintenance Marines. The two Marines amongst others had, in shades of their Wake Island predecessors, attempted to defend the flight line with what weapons they had available to them and were killed protecting their aircraft.
This event, called by some as, “arguably the worst day in [U.S. Marine Corps] aviation history since the Tet Offensive of 1968”, earned the squadron its second title, that of “Bastion Defenders”.
Which brings us to the latest chapter of VMA (Now VMFA) 211.
Beginning in May of 2016, the Avengers transitioned from the Harrier to the F-35B and marked the first combat use of the aircraft in a Precision Munitions strike in Afghanistan in September of 2018.
Finally, and I just found this out, since the war’s end, the Avengers have been redeployed to the UK where they were to deploy as part of a joint carrier air group aboard the HMS Queen Elizabeth on its first operational deployment.
Apologies for its length and the thread hijack, but the squadron’s has certainly, as the old Chinese curse goes, “lived in interesting times”!
