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)

Members of the Women's Organization to War on Styles (WOW) picket a dress shop in Berkeley, Calif., August 23, 1947, in protest to longer skirts and padded hips. They are the wives of GI students at the University of California. Left to right: Jackie Houser; Wanda Ames; Dorothy Inman; Terry Ligon; Ruth Van Arkel; Carrol Reynolds, and Barbara Carmichael. (Photo by AP Photo)

Twenty-year-old women draped in traditional kimonos gather for their “Coming-of-Age Day” ceremony at the Tokyo Disneyland in Urayasu, eastern suburb of Tokyo on January 13, 2020. (Photo by Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP Photo)

Visitors look at a plastinated human body during the “Body Worlds” exhibition by German anatomist Gunther von Hagens at a pavilion of the Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy (VDNKh) in Moscow, Russia on March 24, 2021. Head of Russian Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin ordered a probe of the exhibition after it sparked outrage among conservative religious groups and public figure. (Photo by Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters)

Omar Gamal, a 28-year-old pigeon keeper, stands next to his pigeon coop on his rooftop in the Egyptian capital's twin city of Giza on February 21, 2021, with the Pyramids of (R to L) Khufu (Cheops), Khafre (Chephren), and Menkaure (Menkheres) in the background. An ancient tradition handed down through the generations, the practice of domesticating pigeons stretches across borders from the banks of the Nile to north Africa and beyond, with people not only training birds for competitions, but also serving them up as a dining delicacy. (Photo by Khaled Desouki/AFP Photo)

Children sit near a mosque as they wait to break the fast during the holy fasting month of Ramadan in Palu, Central Sulawesi Province, Indonesia,on April 13, 2021. (Photo by Mohamad Hamzah/Antara Foto via Reuters)

Astronauts Nie Haisheng (C), Liu Boming (R) and Tang Hongbo are out of the return capsule of the Shenzhou-12 spaceship at the Dongfeng landing site in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on September 17, 2021. Three Chinese astronauts, the first sent to orbit for space station construction, have completed their three-month mission and returned to Earth safely on Friday. Photo by Lian Zhen/Xinhua News Agency)

A performer from the Imperatriz samba school takes part in the first night of Rio's Carnival at the Sambadrome in Rio de Janeiro on March 4, 2019. (Photo by Carl de Souza/AFP Photo)