A man looks at the body of a man killed at a residential building damaged by a Russian military strike, as a journalist looks at the scene in Kharkiv, Ukraine, July 11, 2022. (Photo by Nacho Doce/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)

Sailors attend a memorial and funeral service for first rank captain Andrei Paliy, Russia's Black Sea Fleet deputy commander, who was killed in the eastern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol on March 20, in Sevastopol, Crimea on March 23, 2022. (Photo by Alexey Pavlishak/Reuters)

In this photo taken Tuesday, April 14, 2015, immigrant men armed with machetes make their way onto a Durban, South Africa, street during clashes with police and in search of locals that attacked foreign shop owners in the city center. (Photo by Tebogo Letsie/AP Photo)

An Ambassador car, licensed as taxi rolls past other vehicles through a busy road in Kolkata, india, Monday, May 26, 2014. India's oldest car factory has abruptly suspended production of the hulking Ambassador sedan that has a nearly seven-decade history as the car of the Indian elite. (Photo by Bikas Das/AP Photo)

A man performs a split as he practices Kung Fu at Beihai Park in Beijing, China August 20, 2017. (Photo by Reuters/China Stringer Network)

With a presence in nearly every city and town across Iran, the paramilitary Basij volunteer corps has an ever-increasing influence on life in the Islamic Republic. Authorities created the Basij, which means mobilization in Persian, just after the country's 1979 Islamic Republic. It is part of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard. Photo: In this Thursday, August 22, 2013 photo, a female member of the Basij paramilitary militia aims a rifle as a trainer looks over her shoulder in Tehran, Iran. (Photo by Ebrahim Noroozi/AP Photo)

A soldier helps another with her ear protection at the Terningmoen Camp in Elverum, Norway on March 23, 2017. Soldiers demonstrate their skills and tactics during a contract drill as they train to become part of the world's first all-female special forces unit, the Jegertroppen or “hunter troops”. (Photo by Carolina Reid/NBC News)