Fashion from Sergio Hudson's fall/winter 2022 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, Sunday, February 13, 2022, in New York. (Photo by John Minchillo/AP Photo)

A woman kisses her mother during a New Year's Eve party in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines on December 31, 2022. (Photo by Eloisa Lopez/Reuters)

Performers wearing traditional Zulu attire take part in the parade during the 112th African National Congress (ANC) Anniversary rally in Mbombela on January 13, 2024. (Photo by Phill Magakoe/AFP Photo)

A woman rides a donkey during a donkey race in Roum village, Jizeen countryside, southern Lebanon, August 9, 2015. (Photo by Ali Hashisho/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)

Construction workers take a lunch break on a steel beam atop the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center, New York, September 29, 1932. In the background is the Chrysler Building. (Photo by AP Photo)

Dancers perform on stage during the Crazy Horse Paris “Forever Crazy” Media Call at The MasterCard Theatres at Marina Bay Sands on October 11, 2017 in Singapore. Forever Crazy consists of a series of highly aesthetic and visual tableaus presented by a classically trained dancers clad only in textured lighting and projection. The show runs from 11 October 2017 till 22 October 2017 in Singapore. (Photo by Suhaimi Abdullah/Getty Images)

A cosplayer dressed as a “remote worker” with “corporate slave” written on his glasses poses for a photo on New Year's Eve at Comiket, the largest comic market that had been postponed for two years because of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Tokyo, Japan December 31, 2021. (Photo by Androniki Christodoulou/Reuters)