Models present creations of the label Mas Holdings during the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Grandpass in Colombo, Sri Lanka, 28 October 2017. (Photo by M.A. Pushpa Kumara/EPA/EFE)

An elephant decorated with a cloth walk in the annual Perahera (street pageant) at Rajamaha viharaya Buddhist temple in Colombo, Sri Lanka September 10, 2016. (Photo by Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters)

A mahout walks next to his elephant through a busy street in Horana, a suburb of Sri Lanka's capital Colombo on March 23, 2021. (Photo by Lakruwan Wanniarachchi/AFP Photo)

A member of Sakura circus team performs during the second day of a one week show in Padukka, near Colombo, Sri Lanka November 28, 2016. (Photo by Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters)

Wildlife officials carry away the carcass of a turtle that was washed ashore at the beach of Angulana, south of Sri Lanka's capital Colombo on June 24, 2021. (Photo by Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP 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)

Pope Francis passes past a portrait of himself as he arrives to meet youths in Santo Tomas University in Manila, Philippines, Sunday, January 18, 2015. Francis is in the Philippines on Sunday, the final full day of a weeklong trip that also took him to Sri Lanka. (Photo by Alessandra Tarantino/AP Photo)