A demonstrator takes part in the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) pride march in London, Britain, June 27, 2020. (Photo by Simon Dawson/Reuters)

Festival goers having fun at the Balaton Sound music festival in Zamardi next to the Lake of Balaton, 110 km (68 miles) west of Budapest, July 8, 2017. (Photo by Sandor Csudai)

A person does a handstand in front of a burning pile of tyres during a protest against prospect of military rule in Khartoum, Sudan on October 21, 2021. (Photo by Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters)

Participants in costumes arrive at the Notting Hill Carnival in London, Britain, 29 August 2022. The Notting Hill Carnival is the largest street carnival in Europe and returned to London after two year break due to the coronavirus pandemic with more than a million people expected to attend the two-day celebration of Caribbean heritage on 28 and 29 August. (Photo by Tolga Akmen/EPA/EFE)

The artist Luke Egan, also known as Filthy Luker, gets Horrible Harvey, his inflatable monster on October 26, 2022, pumped up for his debut at the annual Halloween in the City celebrations in Manchester, United Kingdom this weekend. (Photo by Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire Press Association via Getty Images)

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)

A reveller dressed as Spider-Man takes part in a presentation at the top of a building during an annual block party known as “Enquanto isso na Sala da Justiça” (Meanwhile, in the justice room), one of the many carnival parties taking place in the neighbourhood of Olinda, Brazil February 7, 2016. (Photo by Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters)

Captain George Ash lies on his back as he prepares to shoot the bowl from the clay pipe held between a blindfolded corporal's teeth. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images). 18th April 1932