Alessandra Perilli, of San Marino, competes during the trap women's qualification at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Sunday, August 7, 2016. (Photo by Hassan Ammar/AP Photo)

Ramoncito Campo kisses his wife Hernelie Ruazol Campo on a flooded street during a southwest monsoon that battered Manila August 8, 2012. The newly-wed couple pushed through with their scheduled wedding despite severe flooding that inundated wide areas of the capital and nearby nine provinces. (Photo by Reuters/Courtesy of Ramoncito Campo)

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)

A visitor looks at pictures of French photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue (1894-1986), on July 1, 2013 during the 44thd annual Rencontres d'Arles photography festival in Arles, southern France. The event runs until September 22. (Photo by Boris Horvat/AFP Photo)

People ride a motorcycle near Koudoukou Mosque where Pope Francis meets Imam Tidiani Moussa Naibi in Bangui, Central African Republic, November 30, 2015. (Photo by Stefano Rellandini/Reuters)

UK Big Brother star Chloe Khan washes her Land Rover wearing a bikini and hot pants in Borehamwood, England on September 22, 2016. (Photo by Palace Lee)

A hand out picture released by Queensland police on November 7, 2016 shows a police officer taking care of a baby koala in Brisbane Australian police made one of their more unusual finds when they uncovered a baby koala hidden in the bag of a woman they stopped in the street. (Photo by AFP Photo/Queensland Police)

An Indonesian woman known as Linda (C) is helped by two Sharia officials after being caned for spending time in close proximity with a man who is not her husband, which is against Sharia law, in Banda Aceh on February 2, 2017. Aceh is the only province in the world's most populous Muslim-majority country that imposes sharia law. People can face floggings for a range of offences – from gambling, to drinking alcohol, to gay sеx. (Photo by Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP Photo)