Medical staff celebrate after all patients were discharged at a temporary hospital set up to treat people with the COVID-19 coronavirus in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on March 9, 2020. China closed most of its makeshift hospitals for coronavirus patients, some schools reopened and Disney resort staff went back to work on March 9 as normality slowly returns to the country after weeks battling the epidemic. (Photo by AFP Photo/China Stringer Network)

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 devotee throws a clay idol of Hindu elephant-headed deity Ganesh into the sea on the third day of the Ganesh Chaturthi festival, in Chennai on August 24, 2020. (Photo by Arun Sankar/AFP Photo)

Fisherman transport sharks to the fish market in the traditional fishing port in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, 26 August 2020. According to media reports, the marine and fisheries sector is considered as one of the affected by the coronavirus pandemic, affecting more than 3.5 million fishermen and all sectors working throughout the supply chain. (Photo by Hotli Simanjuntak/EPA/EFE)

Bangladeshi people walk in a polluted air environment in Dhaka, Bangladesh on September 3, 2020. A study says, air pollution shortens life expectancy by seven years in Bangladesh. (Photo by Sultan Mahmud Mukut/SOPA Images/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Incredible drone image capture colourful water lilies being harvested in An Giang Province, Vietnam, Southeast Asia on September 2020. Water lilies are an iconic symbol in the Mekong Delta and the flowers are immediately sent to market before landing on meal tables. Their stalks are edible and can be eaten raw with either fermented paste or braised sauce, or dunked into sour soup or hotpot. (Photo by Nguyen Sanh Quoc Huy/Triangle News)

People pose for photos among a field of cosmos flowers in a car park before high-rise apartment buildings in Goyang, west of Seoul on September 22, 2020. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP Photo)

Emily Whiteford, 18, of Maryland, stretches before her audition for the Radio City Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall, Wednesday, April 3, 2024 in New York. (Photo by Brittainy Newman/AP Photo)