A hot air ball balloon floats past while people stand in line to climb the Pyramid of the Sun and welcome the spring equinox in the pre-hispanic city of Teotihuacan, on the outskirts of Mexico City, Mexico, March 20, 2016. Spring equinox in Teotihuacán is an annual event which takes place around the 20th and 21st of March at the pre-Hispanic site of Teotihuacán, Mexico. This event is mirrored by other similar events in other pre-Hispanic sites such as Chichén Itzá and Malinalco, Mexico State. (Photo by Edgard Garrido/Reuters)

A Tibetan girl reacts as she gets ready to perform in a function organised to mark “Losar” or the Tibetan New Year in Kathmandu, Nepal, February 11, 2016. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)

Dhruva Aliman does a back somersault as he dismounts from a slackline on the beach at Santa Monica, California on October 19, 2014. Slackline is a balance sport where a line of webbing is adjusted at different levels of tension between two anchor points and participants (called slackers) perform tricks and stunts including somersaults. (Photo by Mark Ralston/AFP Photo)

A surfer is seen during sunset at Pacifica State Beach in Pacifica, California, USA on August 6, 2023. (Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

A General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper stands on the runway during “Black Dart”, a live-fly, live fire demonstration of 55 unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, at Naval Base Ventura County Sea Range, Point Mugu, near Oxnard, California July 31, 2015. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon/Reuters)

In this Tuesday, June 4, 2019, photo, a Yamanote Line train travels above commuters walking across the crossing during evening rush hours in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo. Operated by the East Japan Railway Co., the Yamanote Line in Tokyo makes a loop around the center of the city, connecting 29 stations that include key stops such as Shinjuku, Shibuya and Ikebukuro. A complete loop of about an hour offers scenes of Japanese daily lives. (Photo by Jae C. Hong/AP Photo)

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)