A woman wearing a traditional costume attends the celebrations marking the National Flag Day and the Day of Kyrgyz national “Ak-kalpak” hat at the central Ala-Too Square in Bishkek on March 4, 2021. (Photo by Vyacheslav Oseledko/AFP Photo)

A small flock of birds seems to be giving an escort to an airliner on final approach to Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia on January 12, 2022. The scene took place over Gravelly Point which is an area within the National Park Service's George Washington Memorial Parkway. (Photo by Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

Primary school students attend an emergency evacuation drill on China's national day for disaster prevention and relief on May 12, 2022 in Hefei, Anhui Province of China. China's national day for disaster prevention and relief falls on May 12 every year. (Photo by Ge Qingzhao/VCG via Getty Images)

A soldier looks at a line during a ceremony to mark Martyrs' Day at the Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, 30 September 2022. Martyr's Day is celebrated on the eve of National Day of the People's Republic of China to commemorate the people who sacrificed their lives in pursuit of national independence. (Photo by Mark R. Cristino/EPA/EFE)

A cricket is seen posing on an advertising billboard during the Concacaf Nations League group stage football match between Costa Rica and Guadeloupe at the National Stadium in San Jose on September 5, 2024. (Photo by Ezequiel Becerra/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)

The battleship USS Iowa fires its 16-inch guns during duty in the Persian Gulf on December 16, 1987. In 1943, the Iowa ferried President Franklin Roosevelt home from the Teheran Conference, where post-WW II leaders divided up the world. The ship fought battles from the South Pacific to Korea and escorted convoys through the Persian Gulf. Forty-seven sailors died atop its deck when an explosion ripped through a gun turret. Now, the new port for the retired USS Iowa just might be the home of California's annual asparagus festival, the gritty agriculture port town of Stockton on the San Joaquin River, about 80 miles inland from San Francisco. (Photo by Eric Risberg/AP Photo)

A waste picker unloads garbage at a waste transfer station in Bamako, Mali, August 19, 2018. In the Malian capital of Bamako, donkey carts driven by young men like 19-year-old Arouna Diabate play a vital role battling the fast-growing city's waste problem. Every morning before dawn, Diabate hitches his donkey to a cart and sets off on his rounds, going door-to-door to collect household garbage which he delivers to a local waste transfer station for a monthly salary of around $35. “I won't be picking up trash with a donkey cart for the rest of my life, but for now people appreciate us because we help clean up the homes of Bamako”, Diabate said. (Photo by Luc Gnago/Reuters)