The $250,000 Beverly Hills Chopper socialite Paris Hilton is to receive is displayed at Johnny Fratto's residence November 14, 2005 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Mark Mainz/Getty Images)

Workers carry sacks of tea leaves at a tea estate in Nagaon district in the northeastern state of Assam, India, August 22, 2016. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

Bella Thorne out and about, Los Angeles, USA on June 14, 2017. (Photo by Broadimage/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

TV personality Lindsay Hubbard got “activated” at the Straight Talk Tax Breaks event in Miami on February 24, 2024. (Photo by Michael Simon/startraksphoto.com)

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)

A model attends a fashion show at the “German Fetish Ball” in Berlin, Germany on May 12, 2018. (Photo by Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters)

Fighting Infections (single image) | Fighting Pandemic by Sudipto Das. “It’s exhausting. A tram conductor in Kolkata, India, wears protective clothing from head to toe even in the heat of a summer afternoon. This was when restrictions were easing after India’s first Covid-19 lockdown – public transport was running, but staff were advised to suit up like this. We’ve all grown used to saluting the efforts of healthcare workers, but plenty of other people in public-facing jobs have performed gruelling duties too to keep people safe”. (Photo by Sudipto Das/Wellcome Photography Prize 2021)

A boy jumps from a swing during sunset in Valras-Plage, southern France December 29, 2014. (Photo by Yves Herman/Reuters)