In this handout image provided by NASA, the space shuttle Endeavour is seen on launch pad 39a as a storm passes by prior to the rollback of the Rotating Service Structure (RSS) April 28, 2011, at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. During the 14-day mission, Endeavour and the STS-134 crew will deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) and spare parts, including two S-band communications antennas, a high-pressure gas tank and additional spare parts for Dextre. Launch is targeted for April 29 at 3:47 p.m. EDT.

NASA space shuttle Atlantis in Earth orbit is seen during a Rendezvous Pitch Maneuver, or back flip to enable space station crew members to take high resolution digital pictures of the shuttle's heat shield before docking for the last time with the International Space Station July 10, 2011 in space. Atlantis has embarked on a 12-day mission to the International Space Station where it will deliver the Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module packed with supplies and spare parts. This will be the final launch of the space shuttle program, which began on April 12, 1981 with the launch of Colombia. (Photo by NASA via Getty Images)

The stern of the stranded cargo vessel Rena grounded on the Astrolabe Reef is seen on October 20, 2011 in Tauranga, New Zealand. Salvage crews continue to pump oil off the ship in an effort to remove as much as possible before bad weather predicted for the evening threatens to break the vessel and release more oil into the sea. Over 300 tonnes of oil has leaked from Rena since it hit the reef on October 5. (Photo by New Zealand Defence Force via Getty Images)

An onlooker watches as the “Disney Fantasy” cruise ship is hauled backwards by a tugboat down the Ems River after the ship departed from the Meyer Werft shipyards on January 20, 2012 in Papenburg, Germany. The completed 130,000-tonne ship, which is 1,115 feet long and can accomodate 5,450 passengers, cast and crew, was on its way to the North Sea. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Women grieves near a bodies covered by tarp at the site of a landslide in Xinmo village in Maoxian County in southwestern China's Sichuan Province, Sunday, June 25, 2017. Crews searching through the rubble left by a landslide that buried a mountain village under tons of soil and rocks in southwestern China on Saturday found bodies, but more than 100 people remained missing. (Photo by Ng Han Guan/AP 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)

One of the largest paddle steamers afloat in Britain is the H.M.S. Royal Eagle, former peacetime excursion boat which carried passengers on pleasure jaunts from Tower Bridge to Southend, Ramscate and Margate. Commissioned two years ago as a warship of the Royal Navy, the craft has been in action 52 times against enemy aircraft. The Eagle took part in the evacuation from Dunkirk where she was dive-bombed 48 times and brought home nearly 3,000 British troops. Members of the crew cleaning the paddle boxes of H.M.S. Royal Eagle in London on January 18, 1943. (Photo by AP Photo)

Rope access technicians carry out maintenance service on wind turbines including repairs, blade inspections and cleaning in Izmir, Turkey on February 19, 2021. In Turkey, where investments in renewable energy has increased, there are wind tribunes over 3,500. (Photo by Mahmut Serdar Alakus/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)