A face mask is placed on one of the 'Three business men who brought lunch' statues on Swanston street on March 29, 2020 in Melbourne, Australia. All international arrivals into Australia from midnight on Saturday will be placed into mandatory quarantine in hotels for 14 days as the Federal Government increases restrictions to stop the spread of COVID-19. (Photo by Asanka Ratnayake/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)

American model and socialite Jordyn Woods strikes a glamorous pose for Sacai in the last decade of June 2023. (Photo by jordynwoods/Instagram)

Scooby performs at halftime of the game between the TCU Horned Frogs and Texas Tech Red Raiders at Ed and Rae Schollmaier Arena in Fort Worth, Texas on January 30, 2024. (Photo by Kevin Jairaj/USA TODAY Sports)

The Soulton Long Barrow in Shropshire, UK on January 5, 2025. The main chamber is aligned so that at winter solstice and for a few weeks after, the sun sets directly through the stained glass door, resulting in a beautifuil rainbow of light to flood through the chamber. (Photo by Andrew Fusek Peters/South West News Service)

Salespeople roll out a reproduction of the famous work “Girl with a Pearl Earring” at the artist village on June 11, 2014 in Shenzhen, China. The Dafen Artist Village in Guangdong province, China, is home to thousands of artists who reproduce some of the world's most iconic paintings as well as create their own works. The village, on the outskirts of Shenzhen, is becoming a major center for original Chinese art. (Photo by Palani Mohan/Getty images)

A woman views a painting by American artist George Condo entitled “Jesus” on October 17, 2011 in London, England. (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images)

A member of an Egungun masquerade group, his identity obscured under his ornate costume in Ouidah, Benin on March 13, 2019. The exclusively male practitioners, found across Yoruba culture, use dance and spinning in the belief that they will summon the spirits of ancestors. (Photo by Massimo Rumi/Barcroft Images)