American actress and model Christina Hendricks attends NBC's New York Mid Season Press Junket at Four Seasons Hotel New York on January 24, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)

British-Albanian singer Dua Lipa during the Milan Fashion Week Womenswear Fall/Winter 2023/2024 on February 23, 2023 in Milan, Italy. (Photo by dualipa/Instagram)

Rita Ora attends the the GQ Men Of The Year Awards 2019 in association with HUGO BOSS at the Tate Modern on September 3, 2019 in London, England. (Photo by David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images for HUGO BOSS)

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 monarch butterfly rests on the ground at the Sierra Chincua butterfly sanctuary on a mountain in Angangeo, Michoacan November 24, 2016. Angangueo is a town and municipality located in far eastern Michoacán state in central Mexico noted for its history of mining and its location in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve. The Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve is a World Heritage Site containing most of the over-wintering sites of the eastern population of the monarch butterfly. (Photo by Carlos Jasso/Reuters)

Alexis Ren seen at Focus Features Los Angeles Special Screening of “Nocturnal Animals” at Hammer Museum on Friday, November 11, 2016, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Eric Charbonneau/Invision for Focus Features/AP Images)

Bella Hadid and Gigi Hadid prepares backstage for Savage X Fenty Show Presented By Amazon Prime Video – Backstage at Barclays Center on September 10, 2019 in Brooklyn, New York. (Photo by Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images for Savage X Fenty Show Presented by Amazon Prime Video)

Rita Ora attends the World Premiere of JEREMY SCOTT: THE PEOPLE'S DESIGNER, presented by The Vladar Company and Quintessentially at the TCL Chinese Theatre on Tuesday, September 8, 2015, in Hollywood, Calif. (Photo by Matt Sayles/Invision for The Vladar Company/AP Images)