Kim Kardashian filming scenes for Ocean's Eight in Downtown Los Angeles on March 6, 2017. (Photo by Clint Brewer/Splash News and Pictures)

A U.S. Army crew chief flying on board a CH-47F Chinook helicopter observes the successful test of flares during a training flight in Afghanistan, March 14, 2018. (Photo by Tech. Sgt. Gregory Brook/Reuters/U.S. Air Force)

American model Isabella Khair Hadid is seen on March 13, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by The Mega Agency)

English singer Victoria Louise “Pixie” Lott attends the launch of the new Pixie Lott Paint collection at The Cuckoo Club on June 27, 2017 in London, England. (Photo by PA Wire)

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)

American singer and actress Dove Cameron is seen in Midtown on November 06, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by Gotham/GC Images)

A suspected Vietcong is kicked by a Vietnamese soldier holding a rifle as another soldier attempts to tie his hands on October 22, 1965. The prisoner was one of 15 captured October 21 near Xom Chua when government troops raided in the plain of reeds area. Troops killed 43 suspected Vietcong and seized some arms. (Photo by Richard Merron/AP Photo)

Porcelain Black performs during the ' I Am Still Music' Tour at the Wells Fargo Center on March 26, 2011 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania