The hull on a boat that carried Rohingya migrants for three months is seen at Langkawi island, in the Malaysia's northern state of Kedah, Malaysia, May 12, 2015. Thailand and Malaysia may set up camps and detention centers to shelter hundreds of refugees arriving on their shores, officials said on Tuesday, as a leading inter-governmental agency said about 7,000 boat people were still adrift in the Bay of Bengal. (Photo by Olivia Harris/Reuters)

David Nickerson, 28, competes dressed as artist Bob Ross, during the ZJ Boarding House Halloween Surf Contest in Santa Monica, California October 26, 2013. (Photo by Lucy Nicholson/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)

Men slide in the mud during the Boryeong Mud Festival at Daecheon Beach in Boryeong, South Korea, Saturday, July 22, 2017. The 20th annual mud festival features mud wrestling and mud sliding. (Photo by Ahn Young-joon/AP Photo)

Natalie Geisenberger of Germany, Johannes Ludwig of Germany, Tobias Wendl of Germany and Tobias Arlt of Germany celebrate their teammates slide winning gold during the Luge Team Relay on day six of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics at National Sliding Centre on February 10, 2022 in Yanqing, China. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)

People slide down a 1,082 feet (330 metre) long inflatable water slide in Hong Kong, China August 22, 2015. (Photo by Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

Cars float up from a car garage in a mixture of storm water and gasoline in lower Manhattan as workers begin the process of pumping out the mess. (Photo by Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/MCT)

A Ford Motor Company 1954 V8 model car parked in a garage in the village of Quivican, south of Havana, October 11, 2009. (Photo by Desmond Boylan/Reuters)