Wally Collins holds a bust of author Ernest Hemingway after winning the 2014 “Papa” Hemingway Look-Alike Contest in this handout photo provided by the Florida Keys News Bureau at Sloppy Joe's Bar in Key West, Florida July 19, 2014. Collins, a Phoenix resident, won the title on his sixth try during the event that was the highlight of Key West's annual Hemingway Days festival. (Photo by Andy Newman/Reuters/Florida Keys News Bureau)

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)

A sculptural artwork depicting former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and headless presidents shot by a hooded high school student (not pictured) is seen at the Contemporary Art Museum in Santiago, December 2, 2014. The artwork, part of the “El ladrillo angular” (The angular brick) exhibition, portrays a student fighting against the ongoing continuity of dictatorship because of a political and economic system which has been impossible to destroy, according to “Papas Fritas” the artwork's creator. (Photo by Ivan Alvarado/Reuters)

Sakia Corona, 8, (C) takes part in a rehearsal of the Contemporary Haitian Dance in a communal center in downtown Havana January 30, 2015. Nearly 25 people, from the Haitian Contemporary Dance Company Petit Fey or Small Leaf, in Haitian Creole, rehearse a play called Papa Guede for future presentations in Havana. (Photo by Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters)

Participants run through the streets of the Back Bay during the 16th annual Santa Speedo Run in Boston, Massachusetts, December 12, 2015. (Photo by Brian Snyder/Reuters)

Spectators cheer as the United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket, with NASA's Orion spacecraft mounted atop, lifts off from the Air Force Station, December 5, 2014, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (Photo by Smiley N. Pool/AP Photo/Houston Chronicle)

If the most popular foods of Rio de Janeiro have one thing in common, it is their informality. You can find fine restaurants in the city, but they do not set Rio apart from other places. What does set it apart, and what invariably brings its residents, known as "Cariocas," together is the unpretentious food they eat in bright, loud, crowded bars and restaurants, on busy street corners, or after a day at the beach. Here: A view of traditional bolinhos de bacalhau (fried codfish balls) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 7, 2016. (Photo by Sergio Moraes/Reuters)

Pakistani vendors carry animals in a bus for the upcoming Muslim festival Eid al-Adha in Lahore, Pakistan, Monday, August 5, 2019. Eid al-Adha, or Feast of Sacrifice, is the most important Islamic holiday and marks the willingness of the Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham to Christians and Jews) to sacrifice his son. (Photo by K.M. Chaudhry/AP Photo)