Ukraine's Taisiia Onofriichuk performs with the clubs as she competes in the rhytmic gymnastics' individual all-around qualification during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the Porte de la Chapelle Arena in Paris, on August 8, 2024. (Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters)

Poland's Maria Andrejczyk competes in the women's javelin throw final of the athletics event at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at Stade de France in Saint-Denis, north of Paris, on August 10, 2024. (Photo by Dylan Martinez/Reuters)

Members of a “Diablada” folk group dance during celebrations of the anniversary of Bolivia foundation, in Santiago, Chile on August 6, 2022. (Photo by Ivan Alvarado/Reuters)

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)

Itzae, a three-and-a-half-month-old albino puma cub, walks in its enclosure as it is being presented to the public for the first time, at the Thomas Belt Zoo, in Juigalpa, Nicaragua on November 10, 2023. (Photo by Maynor Valenzuela/Reuters)

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)

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)