Dark clouds hang over the Great Belt Bridge connecting Nyborg and Halsskov, Denmark, on June 26, 2023. (Photo by Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix via AFP Photo)

A man rides a motorcycle on a flooded street following heavy rains in Sanaa, Yemen on April 22, 2024. (Photo by Khaled Abdullah/Reuters)

A woman holding a dog walks out of a plane during a press event introducing Bark Air, an airline for dogs, at Republic Airport in East Farmingdale, New York on May 21, 2024. (Photo by Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)

A woman leaps while arriving to greet a loved one during CLEAR Connects: A Day of Families, a mass reunion event, at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, U.S., May 6, 2021. (Photo by Brendan McDermid/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)

The Wadi al-Salam cemetery, Arabic for “Peace Valley”, is seen in Najaf, south of Baghdad, Iraq August 3, 2016. The world's largest cemetery, in Iraq's Shi'ite holy city of Najaf, is expanding at double its usual rate as Shi'ite militias bury their dead from the war against Islamic State. The Wadi al-Salam cemetery, Arabic for “Peace Valley” has a special place in the hearts of Shi'ite Muslims as it surrounds the Mausoleum of their first imam, Ali Bin Abi Talib, a cousin and son-in-law of Prophet Mohammad. (Photo by Alaa Al-Marjani/Reuters)

A man tries to catch a duck during a competition held as a part of the Dragon Boat Festival, known locally as “Peh Cun Festival”, on the Cisadane river in Tanggerang, Indonesia, Thursday, June 9, 2016. The event is celebrated every fifth day of the fifth month on the Chinese lunar calendar. (Photo by Tatan Syuflana/AP Photo)

Yeshiva School students briefly dance on Grant Street after the menorah lighting outside of the City-County Building for the fifth night of Hanukkah, Thursday, December 26, 2019, in downtown Pittsburgh. (Photo by Alexandra Wimley/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via AP Photo)