Mother and daughter volunteers Niki, right, and Rachel practice their pancake tossing technique in the streets of Wimborne model town and gardens before taking part in the Wimborne Minster virtual pancake race, in Wimborne, England, Tuesday February 16, 2021. Although a physical race cannot take place this year due to the coronavirus restrictions, Wimborne Minster has invited people to film themselves tossing a pancake for 30 seconds and posting it to Facebook. (Photo by Andrew Matthews/PA Wire via AP Photo)

A giant river otter, the world's largest otter species, looks out of its enclosure at the newly completed River Safari in Singapore, on March 25, 2013. (Photo by Wong Maye-E/Associated Press)

A jockey falls from his buffalos during Barapan Kebo or buffalo races as part of the Moyo festival on September 30, 2014 in Sumbawa Island, West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. The traditional Buffalo races, known as Barapan Kebo, are held by Samawa tribes in muddy rice fields to celebrate and provide entertainment ahead of the annual planting season. Jockeys secure themselves on a wooden structure attached to the buffalo, and maneuver across the mud in a race to the finish line. The jockeys weild long sticks, in a similar style to jousting, and direct them towards targets called “Saka”. (Photo by Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images)

A newborn baby giraffe shows its tongue at the Planckendael zoo in Mechelen, 25 kilometers North of Brussels, Tuesday, February 18, 2014. The calf was born on Valentines day, February 14, and has a heart shaped spot on the hip. (Photo by Yves Logghe/AP Photo)

Partially demolished houses stand in the Vila Autodromo slum with the Rio 2016 Olympic Park in the background in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, February 25, 2016. (Photo by Ricardo Moraes/Reuters)

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)

Yaroslav Segeda at the top of a high rise building in Kudrinskaya Square, Moscow, Russia. (Photo by Yaroslav Segeda/Caters News)

Mahouts return home with their elephants carrying grass to feed them on the eve of the rhino census in Kaziranga National Park in Assam state, India, 24 March 2015. Kaziranga will be closed to visitors for the next two days for a census of the rhinos commencing 25 March, in a previous census in 2013 in the park the population of the Indian rhinos was 2329. (Photo by EPA/Stringer)