Actors Patrick Brammall and Anne Hathaway seen on the set of “The Devil Wears Prada 2” in Brooklyn on August 05, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Aeon/GC Images)

British-Irish model Stella Maxwell poses backstage prior to the Elie Saab Womenswear Spring/Summer 2026 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on October 04, 2025 in Paris, France. (Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)

Models showcase designs aboard fishing boats off Ngor Island during the 23rd Dakar Fashion Week, organized by Senegalese-French designer Adama N'Diaye, founder of the brand “Adama Paris”, on December 6, 2025, in Dakar, Senegal. (Photo by Cem Ozdel/Anadolu via Getty Images)

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)

Nepalese army personnel pay tributes before the body of a person who died of COVID-19 before cremating the same in Kathmandu, Nepal, Monday, August 17, 2020. (Photo by Niranjan Shrestha/AP Photo)

Anissa Barbato from New York looks out over the city as she takes pictures from the Edge, the highest outdoor sky deck in the Western Hemisphere on September 2, 2020 as it reopened to the public in New York. Rising 1,131 feet in the air from the heart of Hudson Yards it offers 360-degree views of New York Citys iconic skyline from the 100th floor outdoor viewing. (Photo by Timothy A. Clary/AFP Photo)

Marine One with US President Joe Biden onboard takes off from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, on April 16, 2024. Biden is travelling to Scranton, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Drew Angerer/AFP Photo)

Stiliana Nikolova of Bulgaria performs her ball exercise in the final of the individual competition of the 40th European Rhytmic Gymanstics Championships in Budapest, Hungary, 25 May 2024. (Photo by Tibor Illyes/EPA)