In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, a passenger jet that veered off a runway during take-off and caught fire is seen in the aftermath in Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport in southwestern China's Chongqing Thursday, May 12, 2022. The Chinese passenger jet left the runway upon takeoff and caught fire in western China on Thursday morning, and several people were injured. (Photo by Liu Chan/Xinhua via AP Photo)

People eat sushi off the body of a model at an opening event of a bar in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, August 22, 2015. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

An Afghan girl jumps off the wall of a small cemetery in Kandahar on July 29, 2022. (Photo by Daniel Leal/AFP Photo)

A highland cow in Purbeck, Dorset shows off for the camera in the second decade of February 2023. (Photo by Kate Fry/Bournemouth News)

American media personality and socialite Kylie Jenner shows off her backside at “2 a.m.” in the last decade of March 2023. (Photo by kyliejenner/Instagram)

Kids jump off the breakwater into the ocean ahead the Fourth of July holiday in Gloucester, Massachusetts, U.S., July 3, 2023. (Photo by Brian Snyder/Reuters)

American singer-songwriter Chloe Bailey in the first decade of April 2024 shows off her assets in an orange bikini. (Photo by chloebailey/Instagram)

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)