A boy jumps from a swing during sunset in Valras-Plage, southern France December 29, 2014. (Photo by Yves Herman/Reuters)

A model attends a fashion show at the “German Fetish Ball” in Berlin, Germany on May 12, 2018. (Photo by Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters)

The moon rises on the behind the “Torchbearer” statue in Hannover, Germany, Wednesday, November 5, 2025. (Photo by Julian Stratenschulte/dpa via 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)

Ukrainian soldiers of the 71st Jaeger Brigade fire a M101 howitzer towards Russian positions at the frontline, near Avdiivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Friday, March 22, 2024. (Photo by Efrem Lukatsky/AP Photo)

Workers carry baskets of hand-picked tea leaves at the Makaibari Tea Estate in Kurseong, West Bengal, India, on Monday, September 8, 2014. The 155-year-old Makaibari Tea Estate recently sold it's Darjeeling tea, named Silver Tips Imperial, for $1,850 a kilo to buyers from the U.K., the U.S. and Japan, becoming the most expensive Indian tea ever sold. (Photo by Sanjit Das/Bloomberg)