German kickboxer Christine Theiss (L) hits challenger Olja Zerajic of Bosnia during their WKA middleweight title fight at Postpalast on March 2, 2012 in Munich, Germany. (Photo by Alexandra Beier/Bongarts/Getty Images)

A model walks the runway at the Costume National Autumn Winter 2012 fashion show during Paris Fashion Week on March 4, 2012 in Paris, France. (Photo by Nathalie Lagneau/Catwalking/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)

Participants wearing Zentai costumes, or skin-tight bodysuits from head to toe, take part in a march down the shopping district of Orchard Road during Zentai Art Festival in Singapore May 23, 2015. Close to 50 participants strutted down the busy shopping district during the Zentai art festival which is jointly organized by the Japanese embassy. The festival includes performances and discussions on Zentai from May 22 to from June 5. (Photo by Edgar Su/Reuters)

“Environmental Migrants: The Last Illusion” by photographer Alessandro Grassani, documents the life of people in Kenya, Mongolia and Bangladesh who migrate to escape environmental stresses to the city of their own countries in hopes for a better life. Here: Asia, Mongolia, March 27, 2011. A view of Ulaan Baator over the shoulder of a slumbering drunk. Alcoholism is a huge problem in the city, home to almost half of Mongolia's people. The capital's population has doubled in the past two years. High levels of unemployment and poverty await herders who abandon rural areas and arrive in the city, illiterate and untrained in any skills necessary for urban jobs. (Photo by Alessandro Grassani)

People help a wounded person after Yishai Schlissel, an ultra-Orthodox Jew, attacked people with a knife during a gay pride parade in Jerusalem on Thursday, July 30, 2015. Schlissel lunged into a group of revelers leading Jerusalem's annual gay pride parade and stabbed several of them Thursday evening as they marched in the holy city, Israeli police and witnesses said. (Photo by Sebastian Scheiner/AP Photo)

In this September 30, 2017 photo, people perform “transvestite target practice” to protest the killings of transvestite prostitutes during the annual LGBQT march in Asuncion, Paraguay. Advocacy groups fear the stigma and attacks against the LGBQT community could get worse now that the country's education minister has banned classes about sexual diversity in schools and even volunteered to help burn all books related to the subject. (Photo by Jorge Saenz/AP Photo)

A man shelters from the rain with plastic bags, at a market in Tembisa, east of Johannesburg, South Africa, Monday, March 23, 2020. South Africa, Africa's most industralized economy and a nation of 57 million people, will to go into a nationwide lockdown for 21 days from Thursday to fight the spread of the new coronavirus. (Photo by Themba Hadebe/AP Photo)