Kimono-clad women from Thailand take selfies among blooming cherry blossoms at Ueno Park in Tokyo, Japan on March 27, 2021. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

Sеx worker Geraldine, wearing cat make-up, excitedly holds up a dress she is thinking of buying from a street vendor, so that her partner, sitting nearby to keep her company, can see it, as she waits for clients outside the Revolution subway station, in Mexico City, Saturday, March 13, 2021. According to Geraldine, 30, the pandemic has cut clients and increased risks to the sеx workers but has also brought out more assistance for them too, both from dedicated organizations such as the activist group Brigada Callejera or “The Street Brigade” and from individuals who have donated food or clothing. (Photo by Rebecca Blackwell/AP Photo)

The galactic centre of the Milky Way glows brightly in the clear night sky above the lighthouse at Portland Bill on the Dorset Jurassic Coast, United Kingdom on April 13, 2021. (Photo by Graham Hunt/Alamy Live News)

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)

Partially demolished houses stand in the Vila Autodromo slum with the Rio 2016 Olympic Park in the background in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, February 25, 2016. (Photo by Ricardo Moraes/Reuters)

Two robotic legged squad support system (LS3) machines by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency follow a technician during a demonstration at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Virginia, on September 10, 2012. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Mallory S. VanderSchans via The Atlantic)

Mahouts return home with their elephants carrying grass to feed them on the eve of the rhino census in Kaziranga National Park in Assam state, India, 24 March 2015. Kaziranga will be closed to visitors for the next two days for a census of the rhinos commencing 25 March, in a previous census in 2013 in the park the population of the Indian rhinos was 2329. (Photo by EPA/Stringer)

A reveller dressed up as Austrian drag queen and 2014 Eurovision song contest winner Conchita Wurst takes part in New Year's celebrations in Coin, near Malaga, southern Spain, early January 1, 2015. Villagers and revellers dressed up in funny costumes to take part in the New Year's celebration. (Photo by Jon Nazca/Reuters)