Colombia's Egan Bernal pedals as he warms up ahead of the 10th stage of the Giro d'Italia cycling race, an individual time trial from Lucca to Pisa, Italy, Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (Photo by Marco Alpozzi/LaPresse via AP Photo)

Bujang, a 35-year-old male orangutan rescued from a circus in Sumatra, washes his face on a sanctuary island surrounded by a river where non-releasable orangutans are protected for life at the Samboja Lestari Orangutan Rehabilitation Center run by the non-profit Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOS) Foundation in Samboja, East Kalimantan, on July 12, 2024. (Photo by Yasuyoshi Chiba/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)

A participant runs in high-heels as she competes in the Stiletto Run in Bucharest June 14, 2014. The annual 50 metres race requires participants to wear high-heels that are at least 7cm tall. (Photo by Bogdan Cristel/Reuters)

A chevrotain or mouse deer feeds in its enclosure at Zurich Zoo, Zurich, Switzerland, October 17, 2012. (Photo by Patrick B. Kraemer/AP)

Flower garlands, fruits and a pair of sandals of a woman who died from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), are placed by her relatives on the spot where she was cremated, as part of a ritual at a crematorium in New Delhi, India, April 30, 2021. (Photo by Adnan Abidi/Reuters)

Fishermen are seen near thousands of fish found dead at Lake Maninjau due to lack of oxygen levels at the bottom of the lake and bad weather that hit the area in Agam, West Sumatra Province, Indonesia on April 29, 2021. (Photo by Muhammad Arif Pribadi/Antara Foto via Reuters)

Hot-air balloons float over the Oka River during the Russian Sky International Balloon Festival in Ryazan Region, Russia on July 26, 2021. (Photo by Alexander Ryumin/TASS)