A man smokes marijuana during a demonstration in support of the legalization of marijuana in Medellin, May 2, 2015. (Photo by Fredy Builes/Reuters)

Deal or New Deal, Season 2. Pictured: Meghan Markle, 2006. (Photo by Paul Drinkwater/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)

People take pictures of huge waves crash on the Viavelez seafront in the northern Spanish region of Asturias January 2, 2016. (Photo by Eloy Alonso/Reuters)

An Afghan girl carries washed clothes on her head in Bamiyan, Afghanistan on March 2, 2023. (Photo by Ali Khara/Reuters)

Florida delegates dance on Day 2 of the RNC in Milwaukee on July 16, 2024. (Photo by Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

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)

Brad Snead walks past melting ice on the Cook Inlet beach, Saturday, March 26, 2011, in Kenai, Alaska, while looking for agates. (AP Photo/Peninsula Clarion, M. Scott Moon)