A performer dances at a housing exhibition in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, September 27, 2015. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

Children fill plastic containers with water from a well on a street, close to a neighbourhood called “The Tank” in the slum of Petare in Caracas, Venezuela, March 17, 2016. Although their nation has one of the world's biggest hydroelectric dams and vast rivers like the fabled Orinoco, Venezuelans are still suffering water and power cuts most days. The problems with stuttering services have escalated in the last few weeks: yet another headache for the OPEC nation's 30 million people already reeling from recession, the world's highest inflation rate, and scarcities of basic goods. President Nicolas Maduro blames a drought, while the opposition blames government incompetence. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

American media personality and socialite Kim Kardashian poses at GQ's Men of the Year Party at Bar Marmont, Thursday, November 16, 2023, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/AP Photo)

A woman receives money at a food stand using the light of her mobile phone during a power outage affecting Caracas and other regions of the country, in Caracas, Venezuela on August 30, 2024. (Photo by Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/Reuters)

Kenyan-Mexican actress Lupita Nyong'o attends the 76th Annual Tony Awards in New York City, U.S., June 11, 2023. (Photo by Amr Alfiky/Reuters)

Edinburgh mask maker Lorraine Pritchard on Sunday, January 28, 2024 alongside some of her Venetian masks which will be worn and displayed at the Venice Carnival, which starts on Saturday February 3. Lorraine studied model making at Glasgow College of Building and Printing and Venetian mask making in Florence, Italy. She travels to Venice each year to be a “mask” herself, wearing different masks she has designed as a live exhibit of her work. (Photo by Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images)

Meghan Puhr participates in a virtual realty presentation during an Intel news conference before CES International, Wednesday, January 4, 2017, in Las Vegas. (Photo by John Locher/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)