Chinese epidemic control workers wear protective suits as they disinfect each other after performing nucleic acid swab test for COVID-19 on citizens at a government testing site in Xicheng District during an organized tour on June 24, 2020 in Beijing, China. While Chinese government medical officials have said they believe they have controlled the spread, authorities are trying to contain the outbreak linked to the Xinfadi wholesale food market, Beijing's biggest supplier of produce and meat. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Followers of the Stowdart Sect of the Zion Church of God, sing and dance during a service in the historic neighborhood of Mbare in Harare on August 20, 2023. Zimbabweans will head to the polls on August 23, 2023 to vote in general and presidential elections. (Photo by John Wessels/AFP Photo)

USA's Tara Davis-Woodhall reacts as she competes in the women's long jump final during the World Athletics Championships at the National Athletics Centre in Budapest on August 20, 2023.. (Photo by Marton Monus/Reuters)

A model walks along the Edge observation deck in the city’s Hudson Yards district on World Photography Day in New York on August 19, 2023. (Photo by Lev Radin/Pacific Press/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Russian woman takes selfie near military vehicle during the rehearsal for a military parade in Moscow, Russia, 29 April 2019. Russia will hold a Victory Day military parade on 09 May 2019 to mark the 74th anniversary since the capitulation of Nazi Germany in 1945. (Photo by Yuri Kochetkov/EPA/EFE)

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)

Mikhail Kalashnikov, the father of the world's most popular assault rifle, is handed an AK-74 November 23, 2002 in Izhevsk,1000 East km. from Moscow. November 23 marked the 55th anniversary of the release of the first Kalashnikov gun. According to the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategic and Technologies some 70 million to 100 million Kalashnikovs have been built worldwide since 1947, compared about 7 million to Kalashnikov's Western rival the M-16 assault rifles. (Photo by Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images)

Stuart Craig of Washington tries out a Sig Sauer 1911 model Scorpion pistol at the Sig Sauer booth at the National Shooting Sports Foundation's 34th annual Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show at the Sands Expo and Convention Center January 17, 2012 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The SHOT Show is the largest annual gathering of shooting professionals with more than 1,600 exhibitors and 30,000 attendees expected. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)