In the spring of 1965, within weeks of 3,500 American Marines arriving in Vietnam, a 39-year-old Briton named Larry Burrows began work on a feature for LIFE magazine, chronicling the day-to-day experience of U.S. troops on the ground – and in the air – in the midst of the rapidly widening war. The photographs in this gallery focus on a calamitous March 31, 1965, helicopter mission; Burrows’ “report from Da Nang”, featuring his pictures and his personal account of the harrowing operation, was published two weeks later as a now-famous cover story in the April 16, 1965, issue of LIFE.

Photo: Man your battle stations: The crew chief of helicopter Yankee Papa 13, lance corporal James C. Farley, mans an M-60 machine gun during a mission near Da Nang, Vietnam on March 31, 1965. (Photo by Larry Burrows/Time & Life Pictures)

Many powerful photographs have been made in the aftermath of the devastating collapse of a garment factory on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh. But one photo, by Bangladeshi photographer Taslima Akhter, has emerged as the most heart wrenching, capturing an entire country’s grief in a single image... Photo: Two victims amid the rubble of a garment factory building collapse in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, April 25, 2013. (Photo by Taslima Akhter)

A woman works at a factory producing clay pots at Phu Lang pottery village in Bac Ninh province, Vietnam, May 14, 2015. The village is part of an old pottery triangle in northern Vietnam which includes Bat Trang and Tho Ha, and has been producing pottery since the 13th century, according to local media. (Photo by Reuters/Kham)

Bangladesh soldiers carry a woman survivor from the rubble at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, April 25, 2013. By Thursday, the death toll reached at least 194 people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/AP Photo)

Convicts showcase creations during a fashion show at female penal colony No 10 in the village of Gornoye, Primorye Territory, Russia on June 7, 2017. Prisoners of the colony sew clothes at a garment factory and every year they celebrate Day of Light Industry by presenting the clothes they made. (Photo by Yuri Smityuk/TASS)

Workers hang thousands of different colorful fabrics on iron wires tied between a bamboo framework and constantly turn them so that they dry perfectly in a flooded field in Narayanganj, Bangladesh on March 16, 2022. (Photo by Joy Saha/ZUMA Press Wire/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A woman looks out from her stall selling traditional garments and textiles at a market in Ashgabat February 8, 2012. (Photo by Aman Mehinli/Reuters)