Droid BB-8 arrives at the world premiere of the film “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood, California, December 14, 2015. (Photo by Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)

Operations & Exercises, 1st place. An RAF Voyager aircraft sits in the harsh winter weather at Mount Pleasant Complex, Falkland Islands, while personnel work to ensure the snow is cleared. (Photo by Sgt Andy Holmes/2020 RAF Photo Competition)

Women walk next to soldiers in Surcubamba, Peru, Thursday, May 21, 2015. The Joint Command of the Peruvian Armed Forces organized a humanitarian mission to Surcubamba, where health care was provided to families from nearby villages in this region called VRAEM, the acronym for Valley of the Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro rivers, where sixty percent of Peru's cocaine originates. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

Iraqi security forces take part in training, as they prepare to fight against militants of the Islamic State, at a training camp on the outskirts of Mosul January 10, 2015. (Photo by Azad Lashkari/Reuters)

In this Saturday, March 21, 2015 photo, a porter rests carrying supplies for the upcoming climbing season, near the Everest Base camp, Nepal. Nepal has cleared more than 300 mountaineers to climb Mount Everest after they had to abandon last year's efforts when an ice avalanche killed 16 guides in the mountain's deadliest disaster, an official said on March 20. The three-month climbing season for Everest, the world's tallest mountain, begins in March. (Photo by Tashi Sherpa/AP Photo)

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 girl allows a butterfly to be placed on her nose at the Sensational Butterflies exhibition at the Natural History Museum on April 6, 2011 in London, England. The exhibition is divided up into five sensory zones exploring how butterflies see, hear, taste, smell and touch. The display containing hundreds of butterflies runs from April 12 to September 11, 2011. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)