Fabrics dry on bamboo scaffolding on Inle lake in Myanmar, March 2024. The cloth will be made into a traditional garment called a longyi, worn by both sexes. (Photo by Hilton Chen/Solent news)

A demonstrator sits on the coffin containing the body of a protester who was killed during previous protests in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, March 4, 2019. Protesters are angry about skyrocketing inflation and the government's failure to prosecute embezzlement from a multi-billion Venezuelan program that sent discounted oil to Haiti. (Photo by Dieu Nalio Chery/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)

A spectator waits for the start of the Jeremy Scott show during Fashion Week in New York, Thursday, February 8, 2018. (Photo by Andres Kudacki/AP Photo)

A member of the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group (GIGN) deactivates a bomb from a supposed terrorist during a training exercise in the event of a terrorist attack in collaboration with Recherche Assistance Intervention Dissuasion (RAID) and Research and Intervention Brigades (BRI) in presence of the French Interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve at la Gare Montparnasse, in central Paris on April 20, 2016. (Photo by Miguel Medina/Reuters)

Protesters, mainly Houthi supporters, hold posters showing the late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar as they rally to show support to Lebanon's Hezbollah and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in Sanaa, Yemen on October 18, 2024. (Photo by Khaled Abdullah/Reuters)

The Cobra JoyRide car charger by Cobra Electronics is displayed during a press event at The Venetian for the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) January 8, 2012 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The JoyRide works with Android phones and can automatically trigger preset phone functions like enabling GPS or disabling Wi-Fi with the press of a single button. It will be available for USD 39 in the second quarter of 2012. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

A derelict farm house adorns the horizon as it sits in a field in the Lancashire Countryside on January 26, 2012 in Burscough, England. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)