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 Palestinian student jumps through a fire ring during a military-style show at a school in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip March 28, 2016. (Photo by Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters)

A dog jumps into water during the “World Dog Show” in Leipzig, Germany, November 10, 2017. Around 31,000 animals are expected at the international pedigree dog competition taking place from 8 to 12 November 2017. (Photo by Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters)

Shemika Charles limbos under her car at Niagara Falls State Park on May 28, 2015 in Buffalo, New York. A world record holding limbo queen thinks she has become the first person to shimmy under a car. Shemika Charles amazed herself and onlookers when she bent over backwards to get underneath the SUV earlier this week. The supple 22-year-old entered the record books in 2010 when she limboed down to an incredible eight and a half inches – the height of a beer bottle. She trains for up to four hours a day to keep her body in peak condition and now travels around America performing with her family. However, regular performances put an incredible strain on her body and she sees a chiropractor once a week to have her hips realigned. Her mother was also a successful limbo dancer in her home country of Trinidad and Tobago but had to give up due to injury. (Photo by Ruaridh Connellan/Barcroft USA)

In this Wednesday, May 13, 2015 photo, a Nepalese laborer carries a load of bricks at a brick factory in Bhaktapur, Nepal. Almost 745,600 buildings and homes have been damaged or destroyed, including at least 87,700 in the capital, according to Nepal's emergency authority. Engineers say only 40 percent of Kathmandu's damaged buildings as habitable. (Photo by Bernat Amangue/AP Photo)

A devotee throws a clay idol of Hindu elephant-headed deity Ganesh into the sea on the third day of the Ganesh Chaturthi festival, in Chennai on August 24, 2020. (Photo by Arun Sankar/AFP Photo)

Incredible drone image capture colourful water lilies being harvested in An Giang Province, Vietnam, Southeast Asia on September 2020. Water lilies are an iconic symbol in the Mekong Delta and the flowers are immediately sent to market before landing on meal tables. Their stalks are edible and can be eaten raw with either fermented paste or braised sauce, or dunked into sour soup or hotpot. (Photo by Nguyen Sanh Quoc Huy/Triangle News)

A tiger plays in water at a tiger zoo in Chaing Mai, Thailand on March 31, 2021. (Photo by Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters)