Hungary's athlete Anna Toth receives help after a fall in the women's 100m hurdles semifinal during the European Athletics Championships at the Olympic stadium in Rome on June 8, 2024. (Photo by Anne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP Photo)

Protesters wear masks, the left in the colors of the Kenyan national flag, as they join others carrying mock coffins and red-painted crosses, symbolizing the blood of the 28 non-Muslims singled out and killed in the recent attack on a bus in Mandera by Somali militant group al-Shabab, outside government offices in downtown Nairobi, Kenya Tuesday, November 25, 2014. (Photo by Ben Curtis/AP Photo)

Aldi SugandaRizal (2 years-old) smoking a cigarette while playing at the family home in Sekayu district, South Sumatera, Indonesia on May 23, 2010. (Photo by Ardiles Rante/Barcroft Media)

Christian Bale poses for a fan at the 25th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards at the Shrine Auditorium & Expo Hall on Sunday, January 27, 2019, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)

Mount Sinabung continues to spew thick smoke into the air in Karo, North Sumatra on October 30, 2020. (Photo by Albert Ivan Damanik/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

A woman rides a Vespa during the Annual Columbus day parade in New York on October 11, 2021. (Photo by Kena Betancur/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)

Looters scramble in Philipsburg, St. Maarten, Sunday September 10, 1995 for goods in the Ram's department store, which contained mostly food and liquor. No attempts are currently being made by Dutch troops on the island to stop the looting, since few relief supplies have arrived in St. Maarten, which was ravaged on Tuesday by Hurricane Luis. (Photo by John McConnico/AP Photo)