An NHS worker walks past a banner supporting NHS staff outside Salford Royal Hospital on March 22, 2020 in Manchester, UK. Coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread to at least 182 countries, claiming over 13,069 lives and infecting more than 308,592 people. There have now been 5,018 diagnosed cases in the UK and 233 deaths. (Photo by Anthony Devlin/Getty Images)

In this Wednesday, April 15, 2020 file photo, a motorcycle delivery man rides past a billboard urging people to stay home over the coronavirus pandemic in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Wealthier Western countries are considering how to ease lockdown restrictions and start taking gradual steps toward reviving business and daily life. But many developing countries, particularly in the Middle East and Africa, can hardly afford the luxury of any misstep. (Photo by Jon Gambrell/AP Photo/File)

Final-year student Alina Repkina prepares for a livestream of the Last Bell ceremony for school leavers at secondary school No 11 in Rostov-On-Don, Russia on May 30, 2020. It is the first time in Russia that such ceremonies have been held via video link due to the coronavirus lockdown restrictions. (Photo by Valery Matytsin/TASS)

Miss Seychelles Gabriella Gonthier walks through the crowd with fellow contestants for the start of the final round of the 71st Miss Universe Beauty Pageant in New Orleans Saturday, January 14, 2023. (Photo by Gerald Herbert/AP Photo)

A female soldier takes part in a training for women at the Tolemaida Military Air Base in Tolemaida, Colombia, on May 16, 2023. The last time the Colombian Army enlisted women in their ranks was in 1993. Now, 30 years on, more than 1,200 women voluntarily joined the military service in the country. (Photo by Raúl Arboleda/AFP Photo)

Visitors run in as the gates open for the 188th edition of the traditional Oktoberfest beer and amusement festival in the German Bavaria state's capital of Munich, Germany, 16 September 2023. Oktoberfest runs from 16 September to 03 October. (Photo by Anna Szilagyi/EPA)

A couple kiss in front of a barricade set by demonstrators during clashes with police following a protest condemning the arrest of rap singer Pablo Hasél in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, February 18, 2021. Protests over the imprisonment of a rapper convicted for insulting the Spanish monarchy and praising terrorist violence have morphed for the third night in a row into rioting. Pablo Hasél began this week to serve a 9-month sentence in a northeastern prison. (Photo by Emilio Morenatti/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)