Characters from Star Wars pose for a photocall to promote the release of Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace 3D at The London Eye on February 8, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Dave J. Hogan/Getty Images)

Ratko Mladic makes his first appearance at the International Criminal Tribunal on June 3, 2011 in The Hague, Netherlands. Ex-Bosnian Serb army leader Ratko Mladic will make his first appearance at The Hague war crimes tribunal after being declared fit to stand trial. Mladic was arrested a week ago after going into hiding for the past 16 years and is charged with atrocities committed during the Bosnian war. (Photo Serge Ligtenberg/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)

An Ethiopian Orthodox monk prays within a rock hewn church ahead of Ethiopian Christmas in Lalibela, January 6, 2017, which is celebrated on January 7. (Photo by Tiksa Negeri/Reuters)

Ethiopian pilgrims pray during a Mass service for Ethiopian Christmas at the Bole Medhane Alem cathedral in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Monday, January 6, 2025. (Photo by AP Photo/Stringer)

Addis Ababa police officers take part in a parade to display their new uniforms, and their readiness for the upcoming Ethiopian parliamentary and regional elections, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, June 19, 2021. (Photo by Baz Ratner/Reuters)

An Ethiopian refugee who fled Tigray region, stands within the Fashaga camp on the Sudan-Ethiopia border, in Kassala state, Sudan on December 13, 2020. (Photo by Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters)

Faithful jump into the waters of Fasilides Bath as part of a ceremony in which the waters are blessed by the priest of Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo church during the second day of Timket in Gondar, Ethiopia, January 20, 2016. “Timket”, the greatest Ethiopian festival of the year is to commemorate Jesus Christ's baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist. (Photo by Tiksa Negeri/Reuters)