Kazakhstan's Elena Rybakina (L) checks on France's Alize Cornet after resulting injured during their women's singles tennis match on the fourth day of the 2023 Wimbledon Championships at The All England Tennis Club in Wimbledon, southwest London, on July 6, 2023. (Photo by Glyn Kirk/AFP Photo)

English television personality, Love Island's Faye Winter is seen painted as a Killer Whale as part of a PETA protest photocall for marine animals in London's Piccadilly Circus on November 18, 2022. (Photo by The Mega Agency)

Irina Shayk posed on a unique bathroom set at Magazine London after walking in the Mowala SS25 catwalk show on September 16, 2024. The supermodel stunned in a bold, avant-garde outfit made entirely of blonde hair. (Photo by Lensi Photography/Splash News and Pictures)

A person looks at Theresa Chromati's “steadfast, step into me (allow silence to create the sounds you desire most)”, which is part of Frieze Sculpture, in Regent's Park, in London, Britain on September 18, 2024. (Photo by Mina Kim/Reuters)

People exercise in Primrose Hill in London, Britain, 20 March 2025. The first day of spring in the UK astronomically occurs on the vernal equinox where earth's axis is not tilted towards or away from the sun, resulting in an equal amount of day and night on all latitudes. (Photo by Neil Hall/EPA/EFE)

England fans react as they watch a live broadcast of the Women's Euro final football match between England and Spain, at Boxpark Wembley in London on July 27, 2025. (Photo by Niklas Halle'n/AFP Photo)

A red deer looks as though it is yawning while it bellows at sunrise. The stag created a cloud of steamy breath as it was warmed by the first light of the sun in Richmond Park, London on October 28, 2025. (Photo by Cristian Vasile/Solent News & Photo Agency)

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)