Workers hang thousands of different colorful fabrics on iron wires tied between a bamboo framework and constantly turn them so that they dry perfectly in a flooded field in Narayanganj, Bangladesh on March 16, 2022. (Photo by Joy Saha/ZUMA Press Wire/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Cast member, Iranian actress Zar Amir-Ebrahimi poses during a photocall for the film “Holy Spider” at the 75th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, on May 23, 2022. (Photo by Stephane Mahe/Reuters)

Workers lay out hundreds of bundles of dyed joss sticks to cure in the sun in Hanoi, Vietnam in the last decade of September 2024. They will next be coated with incense powder made from Canarium sap and charcoal. (Photo by Piyush Paul/Solent News)

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)

Yawalapiti children play during the preparations for the celebration of “quarup”, a ritual held to honor in death a person of great importance to them, in the Xingu National Park, Mato Grosso State, May 7, 2012. (Photo by Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters)

In his series of untitled photographs Nobody Claps Anymore, the Mexican-American photographer Alec Dawson portrays ordinary people in their homes in a downbeat, ultra-stylised manner. Staring into space as they watch TV or water the garden, the real-life subjects of photographer hint at vast reserves of boredom and regret. (Photo by Alec Dawson)

This aerial photograph taken on January 27, 2024 shows a camel in the desert of Samawa in Iraq's southern province of al-Muthanna. (Photo by Hussein Faleh/AFP Photo)

Event entertainer Holly Egan poses with a guitar using an angle grinder as Kevin Jay and Nigel Cox spin burning steel wool, sending sparks flying under the A13 in Essex, UK on April 4, 2024. (Photo by Kevin Jay/Picture Exclusive)