In this picture taken on October 1, 2022, a devotee performs in the guise of Hindu goddess Kali during “Durga Puja” festival celebrations in Ajmer. (Photo by Himanshu Sharma/AFP Photo)

A visitor takes a picture of a display bearing hand prints of war heroes from the War of Resistance against Japan, at Jianchuan Museum Cluster in Anren, Sichuan Province, China, May 13, 2016. Tucked away in southwestern China's Sichuan province, a private collector stands virtually alone in exhibiting relics from the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution. Monday marks the 50th anniversary of the start of the political movement, with no official commemorations planned. Official records whitewash the details of both periods, but admit that Mao made major mistakes. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

Tsukimi Ayano steps out of her house in the village of Nagoro on Shikoku Island in southern Japan February 24, 2015. Tsukimi Ayano made her first scarecrow 13 years ago to frighten off birds pecking at seeds in her garden. The life-sized straw doll resembled her father, so she made more. Today, the tiny village of Nagoro in southern Japan is teeming with Ayano's hand-sewn creations, frozen in time for a tableau that captures the motions of everyday life. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)

A man steers with his legs while riding a motorcycle on a road in Vietnam's northern Hoa Binh province, outside Hanoi, October 15, 2015. (Photo by Reuters/Kham)

In this photo taken on July 19, 2014, a man looks at an excavation as an A.R.M.H., Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, volunteer digs on the search for the body of Perfecto de Dios, in a hidden grave in Chaherrero, Spain. Across Spain, volunteer teams of archeologists, anthropologists and forensic scientists head out every year on expeditions to dig for suspected mass graves – a legacy of Spain's fascist past during the time of General Francisco Franco. (Photo by Daniel Ochoa de Olza/AP Photo)

The waning moon is setting over the mountain “Les Cornettes de Bise” located at the border of the Haute-Savoie and the Valais canton of Switzerland in the Chablais Alps, photographed from Glutieres, January 7, 2015. (Photo by Anthony Anex/EPA)

A girl poses at an entrance of her house next to a bomb dropped by the U.S. Air Force planes during the Vietnam War, in the village of Ban Napia in Xieng Khouang province, Laos September 3, 2016. From 1964 to 1973, U.S. warplanes dropped more than 270 million cluster munitions on Laos, one-third of which did not explode, according to the Lao National Regulatory Authority. (Photo by Jorge Silva/Reuters)

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)