A woman stumbes as people run down Oxford Street, London, Britain, November 24, 2017. Police are responding to reports of an incident at London's Oxford Circus Tube station and have urged the public to avoid the area. (Photo by Peter Nicholls/Reuters)

A man walks pat sculptures with face masks on along an alley in Beijing on August 3, 2021. (Photo by Noel Celis/AFP Photo)

Pixie Howitt,left, Jada-Jo Branney and Darcey McKechnie, pupils at the Dance School of Scotland, pose alongside works in the exhibition Discovering Degas: Collecting in the Time of Sir William Burrell, in Glasgow on September 3, 2024. (Photo by Wattie Cheung/The Times)

Coral grows in a sculpture at the MUSZIF underwater museum in Isla Fuerte, Bolivar department, Colombia, on May 22, 2024. In the Colombian Caribbean an underwater museum protects coral reefs threatened by tourism and climate change. (Photo by Luis Acosta/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)

Alan Swinney points a gun during clashes between groups like Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer, and protesters against police brutality and racial injustice in Portland, Oregon, U.S., August 22, 2020. (Photo by Maranie Staab/Reuters)

Flower garlands, fruits and a pair of sandals of a woman who died from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), are placed by her relatives on the spot where she was cremated, as part of a ritual at a crematorium in New Delhi, India, April 30, 2021. (Photo by Adnan Abidi/Reuters)

An NHS worker walks past a banner supporting NHS staff outside Salford Royal Hospital on March 22, 2020 in Manchester, UK. Coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread to at least 182 countries, claiming over 13,069 lives and infecting more than 308,592 people. There have now been 5,018 diagnosed cases in the UK and 233 deaths. (Photo by Anthony Devlin/Getty Images)