A baby sloth uses his mother as a hammock while she feasts on papayas in Heredia province in Costa Rica in April 2023. (Photo by William Steele/Solent News)

A member of Libyan forces allied with the U.N.-backed government fires a weapon on a pickup truck during a battle with Islamic State militants in Giza Bahreya, in Sirte, Libya October 27, 2016. (Photo by Hani Amara/Reuters)

An opposition fighter from the Failaq al-Rahman brigade fires a heavy machine gun in Jobar, a rebel-held district on the eastern outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus, on March 19, 2017. (Photo by Amer Almohibany/AFP Photo)

A model walks the runway wearing creations by Bianca Spender during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia in Sydney, Australia, 14 May 2018. (Photo by Dan Himbrechts/EPA/EFE)

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 model poses for a portrait backstage during Dakar Fashion Week July 10, 2011. (Photo by Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters)

Fotos Pole Street Buenos Aires – Miss Pole Dance Argentina 2012. (Photo by Diego Castillo)