Participants climb over a wall at the “Tough Mudder” endurance event series in Arnsberg September 6, 2014. Competitors who took part in the endurance event saw themselves having to overcome various military style obstacles. (Photo by Ina Fassbender/Reuters)

Ryan Randall plays the bagpipes outside a polling station in Edinburgh, Scotland September 18, 2014. Polling in the referendum on Scottish independence began on Thursday morning, as Scotland votes whether or not to end the 307-year-old union with the rest of the United Kingdom. (Photo by Paul Hackett/Reuters)

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)

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 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)

Belarussians in costumes sing songs during the traditional rite of Shchadrets (Schedry vecher or Generous Eve) in the village of Osovo, some 190 km from Minsk, Belarus, 13 January 2015. Shchadrets is a Belarusian folk holiday celebrated on the New Year's Eve in accordance with the Julian calendar (Old New Year). The holiday is similar to Koliady, when youth in costumes walk from house to house singing holiday songs, performing, and asking for a reward afterwards. (Photo by Tatyana Zenkovich/EPA)

Spectators in colourful attire cheer as the pack of riders (peloton) cycles by during the 14th stage of the 111th edition of the Tour de France cycling race, 151,9 km between Pau and Saint-Lary-Soulan Pla d'Adet, in the Pyrenees mountains in southwestern France, on July 13, 2024. (Photo by Anne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP Photo)

Soldier boys at Fort Dix, N.J., learn something about guns during their working hours, as they show their girlfriends at a camp dance, December 13, 1940. In front row, playing with the coin amusement gun, from left: Pvt. Tom D'Amato of West Orange; Rose Sinkewicz, behind gun site, of Trenton; Julia Ivans of Trenton, and Pvt. Vernon Landers of Kearney. Back row: Pvts. William Sargent and William Corlies of Philadelphia. (Photo by AP Photo)