Vehicles pass through the heavy fog and air pollution that cover Skopje valley in the early morning, in Skopje, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, 14 December 2017. According to media reports, Skopje is considered one of the most polluted cities in the world. (Photo by Georgi Licovski/EPA/EFE)

An artist gets ready backstage to perform an Indian art form of dance called “Ottamthullal” at the annual eight-day long Vrischikolsavam festival, which features a colourful procession of decorated elephants along with drum and trumpets concerts, at Sree Poornathrayeesa temple in Kochi, India, December 7, 2018. (Photo by Sivaram V/Reuters)

A photojournalist is silhouetted by the sunset as a lightning strike at a resort affected by Saturday's tsunami in Carita, Indonesia, Tuesday, December 25, 2018. Christmas celebrations traditionally filled with laughter and uplifting music were replaced by somber prayers for tsunami victims in an area hit without warning following a volcanic eruption, leaving hundreds of people dead and thousands homeless in disaster-prone Indonesia. (Photo by Fauzy Chaniago/AP Photo)

A 6-week old Fennec fox, the smallest species of foxes, and a native to the Sahara desert in Africa, looks as its mother eats in the Ramat Gan Safari Park near Tel Aviv, Israel, Sunday, November 6, 2016. Sagit Horowitz, the safari spokeswoman said four Fennec foxes were born about six weeks ago. (Photo by Ariel Schalit/AP Photo)

A woman toes a tube carrying a man during the Ice and snow carnival at Taoranting park in Beijing, China, January 25, 2016. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

A woman takes a selfie in front of a sculpture of a rooster that local media say bears resemblance to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, outside a shopping mall in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, China December 30, 2016. (Photo by Jon Woo/Reuters)

Yaroslav Segeda at the top of a high rise building in Kudrinskaya Square, Moscow, Russia. (Photo by Yaroslav Segeda/Caters News)

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)