Cherry Point was planned before the United States entered the Second World War. Congress authorised the station on 9 July 1941 and appropriated $14,990,000; clearing of about 8,000 acres of swamp, farmland and timber began on 6 August, and construction started in November 1941, weeks before Pearl Harbor. Lieutenant Colonel Thomas J. Cushman supervised the building and became the first commanding officer.

The station was commissioned on 20 May 1942 as Cunningham Field, after Alfred A. Cunningham, who had reported for flight training on 22 May 1912 and is counted as the first Marine aviator. Its wartime job was to train squadrons for the Pacific. It also flew anti-submarine patrols: according to Wikipedia an Army Air Forces squadron and a Navy squadron operating from the area each sank a German U-boat off the North Carolina coast in 1943.

The station’s other big tenant arrived the same year. On 16 December 1943 the Overhaul and Repair Department opened in a building of more than 500,000 square feet; it is now Fleet Readiness Center East. Marine Aircraft Group 14 moved in in July 1946 and has stayed.

From the 1970s Cherry Point was the East Coast home of the Marine Harrier. The Aviationist dates the AV-8A in Marine service from 1971 to 1985 and the AV-8B from 1985. In Desert Storm, Cherry Point sent three AV-8B squadrons, two A-6E squadrons, a KC-130 squadron and an EA-6B squadron to the Gulf. Wikipedia credits VMA-231 and VMA-542 alone with more than 2,000 sorties and about 4.5 million pounds of ordnance in January and February 1991, much of it against Iraqi artillery and the Republican Guard.

The end came slowly. VMA-231 flew its last Harrier sortie at Cherry Point on 29 May 2025. VMA-223, the last Harrier squadron in the Corps, returned from its final deployment on 20 May 2026, and on 3 June 2026 four single-seat AV-8Bs and a TAV-8B trainer flew a five-ship formation over the station before landing under a water-cannon salute. Both squadrons go to the F-35B.

Marine Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron 2 called Cherry Point home from 1952 to 2019 and flew the EA-6B Prowler, the four-seat electronic-warfare jet. Its record includes two of the worst accidents in Marine aviation. On 26 May 1981 one of its EA-6Bs crashed while landing on USS Nimitz, striking parked aircraft; 14 crew members were killed and more than 40 injured.

On 3 February 1998 a VMAQ-2 Prowler, BuNo 163045, callsign Easy 0-1, deployed to Aviano in Italy, cut the cable of a gondola at Cavalese in the Dolomites while flying at about 470 knots and 80–100 metres, far below the 2,000-foot minimum. All 20 people in the cabin died. The pilot and navigator were acquitted of involuntary manslaughter but convicted of obstruction of justice and conduct unbecoming an officer, for destroying a videotape of the flight, and dismissed.

VMAQ-2 came home from the last Prowler deployment in November 2018 and was decommissioned on 8 March 2019, the last squadron flying the EA-6B.

Fleet Readiness Center East grew from the wartime repair shop into the Naval Air Rework Facility in April 1967, the Naval Aviation Depot in March 1987 and its present name in October 2006. In 2017 it reported more than $720 million in annual revenue and called itself the largest industrial employer in eastern North Carolina; it received its first F-35C that year.

The flying line has changed as fast. VMFA-251 received its first F-35C in 2024, the first active-duty F-35C squadron on the East Coast, and Wikipedia lists VMFA-542 on the F-35B. VMGR-252 flies the KC-130J and VMUT-2 trains MQ-9A and RQ-21A crews. A new headquarters replaced Building 198, gutted by fire on 8 September 2007. What has not changed is the airspace over Pamlico Sound and the outlying fields at Bogue, Oak Grove and Atlantic, where Marines still practise carrier landings and austere-field work.