People look at home-made armoured vehicle look-alikes on a street in Shenyang, Liaoning province, November 12, 2014. A man surnamed Zhang and his friends converted two cars into these two vehicles, for his son, and will be displaying them on show at a local park. The cannons on the vehicles can fire paintballs and smoke shells, local media cited Zhang as saying. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

A girl paddles on her stand-up board on the waters of Guanabara bay at Bica beach in Rio de Janeiro Brazil, January 10, 2016. Few features capture the beauty, or the problems, of one of the world's most dramatic urban landscapes like Guanabara Bay - the finger-like inlet that forms the shoreline and harbor for Rio de Janeiro. The bay, which carves into southeast Brazil from the Atlantic Ocean, literally gave Rio its name when Portuguese mariners mistook it for a “rio”, or “river”. Four centuries later, the bay is preparing to welcome another sort of seafarer – Olympic sailors, who will navigate the bay when the 2016 Rio Olympics kick off in August. (Photo by Ricardo Moraes/Reuters)

A man uses iron sheet to make noises, as a way of trying to disperse desert locusts that had invaded their farms during the second wave invasion in Kakongo village, in Nuu-Mwingi East, in Kitui, Kenya, 06 February 2021. The second wave invasion of the desert locusts in the country comes at a time where most famers are expecting to harvest their farm produce in the country. (Photo by Daniel Irungu/EPA/EFE)

Boys walk home for lunch from school in the village of Kogelo, west of Kenya's capital Nairobi, July 16, 2015. U.S. President Barack Obama visits Kenya and Ethiopia later this month. His ancestral home of Kogelo is home to Sarah Hussein Obama, his step-grandmother. The Kenyan village, burial place of Obama's father, features an open-pit goldmine, a pork butcher's, a school named after their most famous son and outdoor market stalls. Villagers get around by motorbike taxi or on foot while a donkey-cart transports water. Children, some of them named Obama in honour of the President, walk to and from school together. (Photo by Thomas Mukoya/Reuters)

Samburu women of the Lorubai traditional dance group are seen wearing traditional beaded necklaces during a Peace Marathon for pastoralist communities at the Archers post in Isiolo, Kenya on April 26, 2018. The aim of the event is to bring the warring pastoralist communities of Samburu, Turkana, Borana and others together, and end the rivalry due to scarcity of pasture and water in the region. The peace marathon is organized by Kenya's Northern Rangeland Trust. (Photo by Simon Maina/AFP Photo)

A couple dance tango for tourists at Caminito, a touristic hotspot of La Boca neighborhood in Buenos Aires, Argentina, October 15, 2016. (Photo by Enrique Marcarian/Reuters)

Wrestler Kairi Hojo jumps at her opponent Mieko satomura during their Stardom female professional wrestling show at Korakuen Hall in Tokyo, Japan, July 26, 2015. Professional women's wrestling in Japan means body slams, sweat, and garish costumes. But Japanese rules on hierarchy also come into play, with a culture of deference to veteran fighters. The brutal reality of the ring is masked by a strong fantasy element that feeds its popularity with fans, most of them men. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)

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)