Indian actress Priyanka Chopra and American actress Jessica Chastain at Kering's 3rd Annual Caring For Women Dinner at The Pool on September 09, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Nancy Rivera/Splash News and Pictures)

A mahout sits between elephants which are participating in festivities marking the annual harvest festival of Onam at a temple on the outskirts of Kochi, India, September 11, 2019. (Photo by Sivaram V/Reuters)

A South Korean marine in action during their regular drill on Yeonpyeong Island, South Korea November 1, 2018. (Photo by Jeon Heon-Kyun/Pool via Reuters)

In this June 12, 2017 photo, a woman stands in front of a mural on the slope in Central district, Hong Kong. Once known as Victoria after the British queen, Hong Kong island's waterfront formed the core of the British settlement after Hong Kong island was handed over as a colony in 1842. Today as Hong Kong approaches the 20th anniversary of its return to China, it remains a bustling commercial and financial center as well as the location of the main government offices. However, along the streets that angle sharply upward toward the mountains above, a more relaxed pace of life endures. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

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 fireman from the London Fire Brigade, wearing a smoke helmet. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images). Circa 1908

A Vietnamese woman, wearing the traditional “ao dai” long dress, poses for photos along peach blossom flowers ahead of the Vietnamese “Tet” (Lunar New Year festival), in a field in Hanoi, Vietnam, February 2, 2016. (Photo by Reuters/Kham)

A staff of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games holds a placard reading “Mask on” as USA's players react after their defeat in the women's gold medal match of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games ice hockey competition between Canada and USA, at the Wukesong Sports Centre in Beijing on February 17, 2022. (Photo by Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP Photo)