Indian folk dancers display ornaments during a break while participating in the first night of Navratri in Gandhinagar, some 30 km from Ahmedabad, on October 13, 2015. Navratri festivities, or Dance Festival of Nine Nights, takes place between October 13-21. (Photo by Sam Panthaky/AFP Photo)

Alluvial Fan, China. A vast alluvial fan blossoms across the desolate landscape between the Kunlun and Altun mountain ranges that form the southern border of the Taklimakan Desert in China’s XinJiang Province. Image taken by the ASTER instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite on May 2nd, 2002. (Photo by NASA/GSFC/USGS EROS Data Center)

Partially demolished houses stand in the Vila Autodromo slum with the Rio 2016 Olympic Park in the background in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, February 25, 2016. (Photo by Ricardo Moraes/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)

A woman holds thre dogs by a make shift leash amongst the debris left behind by a tornadon on February 7, 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images)

A car rolls south along the Dalton Highway near Coldfoot, Alaska, USA, 03 September 2017. Stretching 414 miles (666 kilometers) north from central Alaska to Prudhoe Bay, the Dalton Highway is one of America's northernmost roads and arguably its most remote. (Photo by Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA)

Revellers enjoy themselves during Hogmanay celebrations in Edinburgh, Scotland on December 31, 2017. (Photo by Russell Cheyne/Reuters)

Military policemen take part in an operation at Cidade de Deus favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on February 01, 2018. (Photo by Mauro Pimentel/AFP Photo)