VMFA-533
military unit
Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 533 (VMFA-533) is a United States Marine Corps F-35B squadron. Also known as the "Hawks", the squadron is based at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, South Carolina and falls under the command of Marine Aircraft Group 31 (MAG-31) and the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing (2nd MAW).
Mission
To conduct joint / combined aviation operations in order to support a Marine Air Ground Task Force commander's Command and Control, intelligence, fires, maneuver, and force protection warfighting functions.
History
World War II
On 1 October 1943, Marine Night Fighter Squadron 533 (VMF(N)-533) was commissioned at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina. Originally known as "Black Mac's Killers", after their first commanding officer Major Marion M. Magruder, they were one of three night fighter squadrons to be activated in the Marine Corps and were outfitted with the Grumman F6F-5N Hellcat, equipped with the APS-6 radar. The squadron left for the West Coast in early April and on 16 April, they embarked on board the USS Long Island headed for the South Pacific. In May 1944, the squadron conducted their final training on the F6F aboard Marine Corps Air Station Ewa, Hawaii and then headed for Eniwetok. On 12 June they relieved VMF(N)-532 and assumed night defense responsibilities for the area. On 30 November they moved to Engebi and continued operations.
On 7 May 1945, with only two days notice, the squadron of 15 F6F Hellcat planes took off from Engebi with R5C escorts and flew to Saipan, a total of 1,004 nautical miles (1,859 km).
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7907231. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1943, 1944 and 1945.
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This entry incorporates text from “VMFA-533” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.