Police fire rubber bullets as they help an Atletico Paranaense fan during clashes between Vasco da Gama soccer fans and Atletico Paranaense fans at their Brazilian championship match in Joinville in Santa Catarina, on December 8, 2013. Dozens of fans fought a savage battle on the terraces at the match on Sunday, interrupting play for more than one hour and leaving at least three people reportedly in serious condition. (Photo by Carlos Moraes/Agência O DIA)

A young woman dressed as a zombie takes part in a zombie parade as part of the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival 2014 in Brussels, Belgium, 12 April 2014. More than a hundred of participants took to the streets of Brussels. (Photo by Ulien Warnand/EPA)

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)

Two three-month-old female white Bengal tiger cubs play with a zoo keeper in their enclosure at the Buenos Aires' Zoo, in Argentina, on April 17, 2014. Captive white Bengal tiger Cloe, gave birth to three cubs – two females and one male – on January 14, 2014. (Photo by Juan Mabromata/AFP Photo)

In this photograph taken on April 16, 2014, a veterinary staff member of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme center conducts medical examinations on a 14-year-old male orangutan found with air gun metal pellets embedded in his body in Sibolangit district in northern Sumatra island. (Photo by Sutanta Aditya/AFP Photo)

A person in costume is pictured during the annual Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival on 5th Ave in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., April 17, 2022. (Photo by Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

People in costumes are pictured during the annual Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival on 5th Ave in New York, Sunday, April 9, 2023. (Photo by Yuki Iwamura/AP Photo)

Ave, 4 years-old, of the United States, paints on her father's hand during the International Tattoo Convention Bucharest 2016 in Bucharest, Romania, Sunday, October 16, 2016. Prominent tattoo artists from across the world displayed their skills in the Romanian capital over the weekend. (Photo by Vadim Ghirda/AP Photo)