Pittsburgh police officers stand near a Port Authority bus that had fallen into a sinkhole along 10th Street and Penn Avenue in Pittsburgh on Monday, October 28, 2019. The bus and a car fell in the sinkhole shortly before 8 a.m. One person was taken to the hospital for a minor injury. (Photo by Kristina Serafini/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review via AP Photo)

An air plane takes off from the airport as air traffic is effected by the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Frankfurt, Germany, March 16, 2020. (Photo by Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters)

A pedestrian wearing a form of PPE (personal protective equipment) of a perspex full-face covering, as a precautionary measure against COVID-19, walks across Oxford Street in central London on June 11, 2020, as non-essential shops prepare to re-open on June 15. Britain's current guidelines on social distancing remain at two metres (2M), but business leaders and some politicians are on Thursday calling for it to be reduced to one (1M), or one-and-a-half (1.5M) metres. (Photo by Justin Tallis/AFP Photo)

Freya Smith aged three, leads one of Erth’s giant dinosaur puppets across the road on August 6, 2019 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Australian theatre company Erth presents their best-selling show Dinosaur’s Zoo as part of Underbelly’s Fringe programme. Featuring giant dinosaur puppets which walk, roar and blink like the real thing, Dinosaur’s Zoo is a perfect example of edutainment for children of all ages, taking place at the McEwan Hall every day of the Fringe at 11am. (Photo by Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images)

A kangaroo and joey are seen in a burnt forest on Kangaroo Island, south west of Adelaide on January 16, 2020. Australia’s continuing bushfire crisis has taken an enormous toll on wildlife, with huge numbers of mammals, birds, reptiles, insects and other species killed. (Photo by Jo-Anne McArthur/Weanimals)

A man is silhouetted as he stands on a walkway in the sky lobby at the Chancellery, the seat of German Chancellor Angela Merkel (not pictured) in Berlin, May 7, 2014. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)

“Kilauea Rules”. The most extreme place we put ours kayakers to paddle till now. Photo location: Big Island, Hawaii. (Photo and caption by Alexandre Socci/National Geographic Photo Contest)

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)