Waura Indians wrestle during this year's “quarup”, a ritual held over several days to honour in death a person of great importance to them, in Xingu National Park, Mato Grosso State, Brazil August 25, 2013. (Photo by Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters)

Cairo-based artist Chanel Arif's paints for her art project called After Dinner that uses humans and their surroundings as her canvas, in her gallery in the capital of Cairo, Egypt March 2, 2017. (Photo by Sherif Fahmy/Reuters)

TV and radio host Lizzie Cundy, 46, attends the World Premiere of “The Hatton Garden Job” at The Curzon Soho on April 11, 2017 in London, England. (Photo by Fame Flynet)

The Breitling DC-3, HB-IRJ, plane fly escorted by Italian Air Force's aerobatic demonstration team, the Frecce Tricolori, during the last stage of its world tour two days ahead of the International Sion Air Show, in Sion, Switzerland, 13 September 2017. From March to September 2017, the Breitling DC-3 from 1940 has done a grand world tour in several stages, over 28 countries and flies 50000km, an amazing accomplishment for this legendary plane that will be celebrating its 77th birthday. (Photo by Christian Merz/EPA/EFE)

A man and his cat rest in the street after an earthquake on May 22, 2021 in Dali, Yunnan Province of China. According to the China Earthquake Networks Center, a 5.6-magnitude earthquake jolted Yangbi Yi autonomous county in Dali Bai autonomous prefecture, Southwest China's Yunnan province on Friday evening. (Photo by Liu Ranyang/China News Service via Getty Images)

Participants take part in a high-heel race at a Gay Pride party in the central neighborhood of Chueca in Madrid on July 3, 2014. (Photo by Gerard Julien/AFP 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)

Jury member Nicole Kidman attends the Jury Press Conference. (Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)