Portuguese police detains a woman that was protesting against the demonstration against “uncontrolled immigration” called by Portuguese far-right party Chega in Lisbon on September 29, 2024. (Photo by Patrícia de Melo Moreira/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)

Models prepare backstage before a presentation as part of Fashion Weekend Plus Size Summer 2015 collection show in Sao Paulo, July 25, 2015. (Photo by Nacho Doce/Reuters)

General Atmosphere at 2014 New York Comic Con – Day 3 at Jacob Javitz Center on October 11, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Laura Cavanaugh/Getty Images)

Dan Luvisi reimagines beloved animated characters and turns them into grimy, twisted, hideous personas that may have just scarred us of our fondest memories from childhood forever. Photo: “The Cook”. (Photo by Dan Luvisi)

To draw the public's attention to a new line of bathing suits, a Tokyo department store used live models to show off the suits on June 5, 1950. The rain didn't bother the curious, and both the girls and the crowd seemed to like the idea of staring at each other through the glass. (Photo by AP Photo via The Atlantic)

Actress Ruby Rose, left, recipient of the Stephen F. Kolzak Award, hands her jacket to presenter Taylor Swift during the 27th Annual GLAAD Media Awards at the Beverly Hilton on Saturday, April 2, 2016, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP Photo)

A Hindu holy man on his way to the annual holy dip at Gangasagar, gestures towards a visitor as he rests at a transit camp in Kolkata, India, Wednesday, January 6, 2016. Thousands of Hindu pilgrims are expected to take the annual holy dip at Gangasagar, where the Ganges River reaches the Bay of Bengal, on the auspicious Makar Sankranti festival day that falls on Jan.14. (Photo by Bikas Das/AP Photo)