South Korea's Black Eagles aerobatics team performs an aerial display forming a Ying and Yang logo during the Singapore Airshow at Changi exhibition center in Singapore on February 16, 2016. (Photo by Roslan Rahman/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)

Andrej Ciesielski dangels his legs off the side of a building overlooking Times Square, New York City. (Photo by Andrej Ciesielski/Caters News Agency)

Two young girls play near a makeshift tent where their family stay after the earthquake in Samandag, southern Turkey, Thursday, February 16, 2023. Ever since the Feb. 6 earthquake decimated swaths of Turkey and Syria, survivors have gathered outside destroyed houses and apartments, refusing to leave. (Photo by Francisco Seco/AP Photo)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry stands inside the historic Shackleton hut near McMurdo Station, Antarctica, Friday, November 11, 2016. Kerry became the highest-ranking American official to visit Antarctica when he landed for a two-day trip on Friday. He's been hearing from scientists about the impact of climate change on the frozen continent. Kerry's aides described the trip as a learning opportunity for the secretary of state. He has been receiving briefings from scientists working to understand the effects of climate change on Antarctica. Kerry has made climate change an intensive focus of American diplomacy during his term, and had previously spent decades working on the issue as a U.S. senator. Trump has called climate change a hoax and said he would “cancel” U.S. involvement in the landmark Paris Agreement on global warming. (Photo by Mark Ralston/Pool Photo via AP Photo)

Soldiers and firefighters carry the body of Chilean President Salvador Allende, wrapped in a Bolivian poncho, out of La Moneda presidential palace after it was bombed during a coup by Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Santiago, Chile, September 11, 1973. (Phoot by El Mercurio/AP Photo)

Mrs. Marie Graskamp of Milwaukee shows the different positions one might assume when entering the bomb shelter in Milwaukee September 3, 1958. This circular entrance is about three feet in diameter. This is the entrance (according to the builders) that would connect to the cellar of a home assuming the shelter was in the ground for added protection. If a bombing should occur, all members of family would proceed to the cellar and then through the circular port into the shelter. (Photo by AP Photo)

Visitors looks at the flying car Pegasus 1, built by French entrepreneur Jerome Dauffy at Paris Air Show, in Le Bourget, east of Paris, France, Tuesday, June 20, 2017. Aviation professionals and spectators are expected at this week's Paris Air Show, coming in, in a thousands from around the world to make business deals. (Photo by Michel Euler/AP Photo)