Images created with Post-it notes are seen in the windows of offices at 75 Varick Street in lower Manhattan, New York, U.S., May 18, 2016, where advertising agencies and other companies have started what is being called a “Post-it note art war” with employees creating colorful images in their windows with Post-it notes. (Photo by Mike Segar/Reuters)

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)

Fans in Star Wars costumes attend the world premiere of Disney's “Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker” at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California on December 16, 2019. (Photo by Valerie Macon/AFP Photo)

A woman reacts as she poses with a man dressed up as the Star Wars character Chewbacca outside the Dolby Theatre, the site of the 88th Academy Awards in Hollywood, California February 26, 2016. (Photo by Adrees Latif/Reuters)

A Ukrainian dancer of the Kyiv City Ballet company stretches prior to a performance at the Theatre de Chatelet, in Paris, Tuesday, March 8, 2022. The Kyiv City Ballet danced to a full house in Paris for the last show of a French tour that has left the company stranded after the war broke out in Ukraine. They described being physically and emotionally exhausted. Being given the opportunity to train and dance was for many a chance to focus on something other than the war. (Photo by Thibault Camus/AP Photo)

Actress with the Donbass Opera Theatre prepares to perform Eugene Onegin in Donetsk, Ukraine, Saturday, February 7, 2015. For the few dozen spectators that turn up, the weekly performances at the city's opera house serve as a respite from the war raging outside between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian government forces. (Photo by Petr David Josek/AP Photo)

Crowds look on as Xolo the Giant Dog, one of the giant Royal De Luxe street puppets taking part in Liverpool's World War I centenary commemorations, walks through the streets of Liverpool on July 25, 2014 in Liverpool, England. French street theatre company Royal de Luxe are putting on a show throughout the city as part of Liverpool's World War I centenary commemorations from July 23-27. The giant puppet grandmother has slept in the hall for two days as part of “Memories of August 1914”. As the giants tour the city the Little Girl Giant and her dog Xolo will meet up with the giant Grandmother telling the story of life leading up to World War One. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)