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 glasses-free Toshiba 55-inch 3-D 4x full HD TV shows the movie, “Coraline” at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show at the Las Vegas Convention Center January 11, 2012 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The TVs are scheduled to be available this year and will come with embedded cameras with facial recognition capability so depending on where you are sitting, the set will adjust the viewing point for the best 3-D experience. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

“Hiding In The Shadows”. This Baby Sandhill taking refuge under Moms wings while sitting on her second egg. I witnessed this baby being born earlier that day,and the next morning saw the other one hatch,what a sight to see. Photo location: Deland, Florida. (Photo and caption by Scott Helfrich/National Geographic Photo Contest)

In a January 19, 2014 photo Phillip Seymour Hoffman poses for a portrait at The Collective and Gibson Lounge Powered by CEG, during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Hoffman, who won the Oscar for best actor in 2006 for his portrayal of writer Truman Capote in “Capote” was found dead Sunday in his apartment in New York with what law enforcement officials said was a syringe in his arm. He was 46. (Photo by Victoria Will/AP Photo/Invision)

American soldiers leaping from an armoured personnel carrier during exercises in Korea, 17th March 1954. (Photo by Three Lions)

A musher handler with Alan Eischens team embraces one of Eischen's dogs just before the ceremonial start of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race that begins a near 1,000-mile (1,600-km) journey through Alaska’s frigid wilderness in downtown Anchorage, Alaska March 5, 2016. (Photo by Nathaniel Wilder/Reuters)

A soldier eats ice cream as she visits a zoo in Pyongyang, North Korea, September 12, 2018. (Photo by Danish Siddiqui/Reuters)

Police officers in action during the eviction of the “Liebig 34” squat, at Friedrichshain district in Berlin, Germany, 09 October 2020. A local court ruled in favor of the eviction of the self-declared “anarcha-queer feminist” house project at Liebig street 34 in June 2020. The house project is considered a stronghold of the left-wing scene in the German capital. (Photo by Filip Singer/EPA/EFE)