An Israeli soldier waits at the bus station, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Tel Aviv, Israel on August 15, 2024. (Photo by Florion Goga/Reuters)

Space shuttle Atlantis launches from pad 39A on July 8, 2011 at the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch of Atlantis, STS-135, is the final flight of the shuttle program, a 12-day mission to the International Space Station. (Photo by Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty Images)

A Mai-Mai rebel soldier shows off his guns at a checkpoint near the Mugunga refugee camp in Zaire; 1996. (Photo by Carol Guzy/The Washington Post)

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)

Erika Kinsey of Sweden reacts after missing a jump in the women's high jump final during the IAAF World Indoor Athletics Championships in Portland, Oregon March 20, 2016. (Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters)

Clutching a large paper bag and shading his eyes as he peers ahead, comic actor of the silent screen, Buster Keaton (1885–1966) arriving at Paris airport. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images). 1st August 1947

A Dongria tribe girl holds her traditional weapon and dance on the last day of their two days long Niyamraja Festival atop of the Niyamgiri hills near Lanjigarh in Kalahandi district, Orissa state. (Photo by Biswaranjan Rout/AP Photo)