Special Merit Award. Mallory Franklin (2019). The British slalom canoeist has competed internationally since 2009 and won nine medals in total at the ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships with four golds, four silvers and a bronze. She has also won eleven medals at the European Championships. (Photo by Richard Pelham/World Sports Photography Awards 2021)

Rebel fighters from the Jaish al- Fatah (or Army of Conquest) brigades manoeuver an alleged explosive- rigged make- shift armoured vehicle during a major assault on Syrian government forces West of Aleppo city on October 28, 2016 Syrian opposition fighters launched a major assault on government forces to break a months- long siege of rebel- held neighbourhoods of the battered city of Aleppo. Rebel groups including the powerful Ahrar al- Sham faction and former Al- Qaeda affiliate Fateh al- Sham Front fired waves of rockets into government- held western Aleppo, killing at least 15 civilians, a monitor said. (Photo by Omar Haj Kadour/AFP Photo)

Juanita Robinson (L) from Ohio and Trenaya Blackburn pose as Quan White from Michigan takes their picture as they vacation on South Beach on May 16, 2016 in Miami Beach, Florida. The Florida government announced it broke a tourism record in the first quarter of this year, attracting 29.8 million tourists, an increase of 4.8 percent over the same time frame in 2015. (Photo by Joe Raedle/AFP Photo)

Tourists take a panoramic view of Kuala Lumpur from a skybox during a media preview at Kuala Lumpur Tower in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 05 May 2016. Skybox, 421 metres above ground level will be the latest tourists attraction at Kuala Lumpur Tower, the 7th tallest freestanding tower in the world. (Photo by Ahmad Yusni/EPA)

A soldier beaten by the mob (C) is protected by plain chothes policemen after troops involved in the coup surrendered on the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey July 16, 2016. (Photo by Murad Sezer/Reuters)

Street entertainer and fortune teller “Juana La Cubana” smiles holding a cigar in her mouth as she waits for tourists in Havana, Cuba, Sunday, May 24, 2015. Juana is 72 years old and has worked in the Cathedral square in Old Havana for 28 years. (Photo by Desmond Boylan/AP Photo)

Mount Sinabung volcano erupts, as seen from Tiga Pancur village, Karo Regency in Indonesia's North Sumatra province October 8, 2014. (Photo by Y. T. Haryono/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)