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 Algerian demonstrator wearing face paint in the colours of the national flag takes part in an anti-government demonstration in the capital Algiers on November 1, 2019. Demonstrators converged on Algiers in their thousands for a massive anti-government rally called to coincide with official celebrations of the anniversary of the war that won Algeria's independence from France. (Photo by Ryad Kramdi/AFP Photo)

Indigenous Sahrawi girls play on an improvised see-saw at a refugee camp of Boudjdour in Tindouf, southern Algeria March 3, 2016. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is scheduled to visit the Sahrawi refugees in south-west Algeria's Tindouf region. (Photo by Zohra Bensemra/Reuters)

Record snowfall in the Sahara Desert near the town of Ain Sefra in Algeria on January 21, 2017. (Photo by Geoff Robinson/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A participant takes photographs of his friend while climbing up the stairs during Sky Run, a vertical marathon event, held in the 123-story Lotte World Tower, in Seoul, South Korea on April 22, 2023. (Photo by Kim Soo-hyeon/Reuters)

Merit Prize Winner: “A Well Earned Rest in the Sahara”. This photo of Moussa Macher, our Tuareg guide, was taken at the summit of Tin-Merzouga, the largest dune (or erg) in the Tadrat region of the Sahara desert in southern Algeria. Moussa rested while waiting for us to finish our 45-minute struggle to the top. It only took ten minutes of rolling, running, and jumping to get back down. The Tadrat is part of the Tassili N'Ajjer National Park World Heritage area, famous for its red sand and engravings and rock paintings of cattle, elephants, giraffes, and rhinos that lived there when the climate was milder. Photo location: Summit of Tin-Merzouga, Tadrat, Tassili N'Ajjer National Park, Algeria. (Photo and caption by Evan Cole/National Geographic Photo Contest)