VMF-211 Wake

Marine Fighting Squadron 211 (VMF-211) "Wake Island Avengers" · USMC · 1941-1952

VMF-211 flew twelve F4F-3 Wildcats off USS Enterprise to Wake Island on 4 December 1941; four days later Japanese bombers destroyed seven of them on the ground. For two weeks the surviving handful of Wildcats, patched together from wrecks, fought off air and naval attacks until the atoll was overrun on 23 December, having helped sink the first major Japanese warships lost in the Pacific. The rear echelon rebuilt at Palmyra Atoll and took the name "Avengers" in memory of the men killed or captured on Wake. The squadron's plunging lion, adopted in 1937 because "the swift and destructive rush of the King of Beasts well represents the attack of a Fighting Squadron," was afterward redrawn diving over the outline of Wake itself.