In this photograph taken on April 28, 2018, Afghan children work at a coal yard on the outskirts of Jalalabad, Afghanistan. (Photo by Noorullah Shirzada/AFP Photo)

Handguns turned in from the public as part of the “Gun Turn-in” event where a $100 gift card is given for every firearm and a $10 gift card for each BB-gun, air-gun, or replica firearm turned over to police at Universal Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. May 28, 2016. (Photo by Jim Young/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)

A child working at Ship breaking yard in Chittagong, Bangladesh on November 14, 2014. (Photo by Pascal Mannaerts/Alamy Stock Photo)

People stand next to a ship, containing tonnes of hazardous mercury-mixed oil, as it was allowed to anchor at Gadani ship-breaking yard in Gadani, Pakistan, 28 May 2021. Authorities have launched an investigation into the anchoring of a ship at the Gadani shipbreaking yard despite Interpol's warning that the ship contains dangerous chemicals. (Photo by Rehan Khan/EPA/EFE)

“A huge wasp measuring 2.5 inches in length, visiting the banana tree in my front yard”. (Photo and comment by John Matzick, USA/2013 Sony World Photography Awards via The Atlantic)

A person watches the sunrise from the Edge observation deck at Hudson Yards on the first day of spring on March 20, 2021 in New York City. (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images)

Students play in their school yard on the first day of the new school term at a primary school in Baghdad, October 18, 2015. (Photo by Ahmed Saad/Reuters)