A brig with scarlet sails travels on the Finnish Gulf coast during a rehearsal for the the Scarlet Sails festivities marking school graduation in St. Petersburg, Russia, early Saturday, June 27, 2020. This year the festival will not be held in the city center, but on the Finnish Gulf. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, there will be no spectators but the event will be broadcast on television. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)

A fireball erupts from a 16-inch gun on the battleship USS Wisconsin during a live fire exercise in the Persian Gulf, October 13, 1990. The ship is in the Gulf as part of Operation Desert Shield. (Photo by John Gaps III/AP Photo)

A cyclist rides in al-Qudra desert in the Gulf emirate of Dubai, on June 8, 2020. (Photo by Giuseppe Cacace/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)

“Business-class” cabins are seen at First Cabin hotel, which was converted from an old office building, in Tokyo, July 3, 2015. Record tourists to Japan are stretching the ability of hotels to accommodate them in a sector constrained by high costs, forcing developers to think out of the box for means to quickly increase lodging options without breaking the bank. (Photo by Toru Hanai/Reuters)

A fruit importer's lorry at Covent Garden, London, with its driver's cabin in the shape of an apple. (Photo by Harold Clements/London Express/Getty Images). October 1928

In this Friday, December 4, 2018 photo, a half sunken cruise ship lays on its side, in the Gulf of Elefsina, west of Athens. Dozens of abandoned cargo and passenger ships lie semi-submerged or completely sunken around the Gulf of Elefsina, near Greece’s major port of Piraeus. Now authorities are beginning to remove the dilapidated ships. Some of them have been there for decades, leaking hazards like oil into the environment and creating a danger to modern shipping. One expert calls the abandoned ships “an environmental bomb”. (Photo by Thanassis Stavrakis/AP Photo)

The world's most advanced humanoid shaped robot “Ameca” (R) gives a wink to visitor at Etisalat section at the Gulf Information Technology Exhibition (GITEX) Global 2022 in the Gulf emirate of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 13 October 2022. The 42nd edition of the annual GITEX Global runs till 14 October 2022 and showcases around 5000 of IT companies from 90 countries. (Photo by Ali Haider/EPA/EFE)