This article studies the bearing-based distributed formation control problem of a group of vertical take-off and landing unmanned aerial vehicles subject to unknown disturbances. Both cases of constant and time-varying velocity leaders are considered and two distributed formation control algorithms are developed based on a hierarchical framework. More precisely, two bearing-based distributed commanded forces are, respectively, proposed to achieve the target formation maneuver. Then, a unified adaptive hybrid attitude control law is designed such that the command attitude, which is extracted from the command force, can be tracked globally. In addition, three auxiliary systems are proposed to guarantee the boundedness of the thrust, to avoid the singular problem of command attitude extraction, to obviate the usage of the acceleration information, and compensate the adverse of the disturbance. Globally, the asymptotic stability of the closed-loop system is proved through Lyapunov stable theory. It is shown that the prescribed formation control objective is achieved. Finally, simulation results are provided to validate the performance of the proposed control algorithms.