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)

Contestant Emilce Lezcano, center, prepares for the evening gown portion of the “Miss Gordita” beauty contest in Asuncion, Paraguay, Saturday, April 25, 2015. In their elegant evening gowns and elaborate hair styles, the contestants defy the conventional idea that only skinny women can be beautiful. (Photo by Jorge Saenz/AP Photo)

An artist (R) gives finishing touches to a New Year mural painted on his house in Chennai on December 29, 2022. (Photo by Arun Sankar/AFP Photo)

Students attend the first day of in-person classes, at a flooded school due to high tide, in Macabebe, Pampanga province, Philippines on August 22, 2022. (Photo by Lisa Marie David/Reuters)

A girl carries breads on her head as she walks in the snow, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, February 8, 2022. (Photo by Hussein Malla/AP Photo)

Old Heidelberg, Dog with Pipe, 1905. (Photo by Detroit Publishing Company)

Members of Brazil's Movimento dos Sem-Teto (Roofless Movement) stand in the hallway of one of the 11 empty buildings that the movement took over recently, in the centre of Sao Paulo, November 6, 2012. According to City Hall, there are some 400,000 people in need of stable housing, including the 4,000 families of the Roofless Movement who are squatting in abandoned or vacant buildings that range from apartment blocks to hotels, in Sao Paulo, the largest city in South America. (Photo by Nacho Doce/Reuters)

In a photo taken on August 30, 2014 a man brushes his dog as he waits to take part in a competition at a dog show in Seoul. Some 2000 dogs took part in the three-day show organised by the Korea Kennel Federation which was celebrating its 58th anniversary. Dog ownership in South Korea is a growing industry widely reported to have passed 10 million in 2013, with private expenditure on pet supplies increasing some 14 percent per year since 2000, according to a report by the Nonghyup Economic Research Institute. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP Photo)