Chelsea pensioner Mike Smith in the rear of one of two Spitfires flying over Sussex during a surprise flight organised by the Taxi Charity for Military Veterans on Tuesday, September 12, 2023. (Photo by Gareth Fuller/PA Images via Getty Images)

Children play on a donkey cart belonging to an elderly Afghan refugee sleeping on a roadside on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan, Wednesday, February 18, 2015. (Photo by Muhammed Muheisen/AP Photo)

The face of a graduating student is displayed on a tablet attached to a robot during a “cyber graduation” ceremony at a school on May 22, 2020 in Taguig, Metro Manila, Philippines. Robots represented some 179 graduating students of the Senator Rene Cayetano Science and Technology High School during a graduation ceremony that was streamed online, as mass gatherings remain prohibited in the country under the Philippine government's lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus. The robots were developed by alumni of the school's robotics club, which used tablets to display the faces of the graduating students as they “marched” on stage to receive their diplomas. The Philippines' Department of Health has so far reported 13,434 cases of the coronavirus in the country, with at least 846 recorded fatalities. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)

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 large bull walrus returns to the shores of Prins Karl Forland after diving and feeding on clams. (Photo by Paul Nicklen/National Geographic). Svalbard, Norway, 2011

Grafitti by the illusive artist Banksy adorns the levee wall in the Lower Ninth Ward on August 29, 2008 in New Orleans, Louisiana. New works by the artist, whose paintings are also sold in galleries, have been popping up throughout New Orleans coinciding with the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. (Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images)

Turkey's Merve Aydin cries after she came in last in her women's 800m round 1 heat at the London 2012 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium August 8, 2012. (Photo by Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)