Hugo Gonzalez of Lake Worth works to put final strokes on his rendition of a Raksha demon. (Photo by Thomas Cordy/The Palm Beach Post)

A worker works at a plant of Hyundai Motor in Asan, South Korea, January 27, 2016. (Photo by Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)

Tattoo artists work on clients during the second International Tattoo Festival in Sochi, Russia, April 23, 2016. (Photo by Kazbek Basayev/Reuters)

An Afghan man works at a traditional yarn factory in Heart province, Afghanistan July 28, 2015. (Photo by Mohammad Shoib/Reuters)

First responders work at the site of a deadly bus crash, in Guatemala City, Guatemala, on February 10, 2025. (Photo by Josue Decavele/Reuters)

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)

German field telegraph operators at work in Warsaw. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images). 1st October 1914

Men at work at the Cardiff Institute, making huge baskets, unique in size and construction, for loading oil cake in South Africa. (Photo by Maeers/Getty Images). 1938