A model presents a creation from the Tom Ford Spring/Summer 2023 collection during New York Fashion Week in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., September 14, 2022. (Photo by Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

English and Albanian singer-songwriter Dua Lipa in the second decade of December 2022 channels Catwoman in leather. (Photo by dualipa/Instagram)

American actress Bella Thorne in the second decade of February 2023 nearly pours on out for “Italian Fashion”. (Photo by bellathorne/Instagram)

UK Love Island’s star Maura Higgins, 30, stuns as she poses in revealing outfits in her latest photoshoot with brand Ego in Dubai, United Arab Emirates in April 2021. (Photo by EGO)

The UK Love Island star Tasha Ghouri stunned in a white see-through dress in the second decade of August 2023. Tasha celebrated her birthday in style. (Photo by Instagram)

A pelican on a lake in California in the first decade of January 2024 deftly snares a large trout after scooping it up, tossing it into the air and catching it in its bill. (Photo by Jiahong Zeng/Solent news)

Firefighters take part in airport emergency exercise at the Sultan Iskandar Muda international airport in Blang Bintang, Indonesia's Aceh province on October 26, 2023. (Photo by Chaideer Mahyuddin/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)