Fisherman Jose Miguel Perez, whose nickname is “Taliban”, navigates the oil infested waters of Lake Maracaibo, near Cabimas, Venezuela, May 21, 2019. Nobody lives as closely with the environmental fallout of Venezuela's collapsing oil industry as the fishermen who scratch out an existence on the blackened, sticky shores of Lake Maracaibo. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

People attend the 49th annual New York City Gay Pride Parade in New York, New York, USA on 24 June 2018. (Photo by Erik Pendzich/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Models turned into “humanoid” robots pose on a train at Waterloo Station on October 2, 2016 in London, England for the launch of new Sky Atlantic TV drama Westworld. (Photo by Matt Alexander/PA Wire)

A performer blows fire during Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations in Chinatown, Binondo, Manila, Philippines, January 25, 2020. (Photo by Eloisa Lopez/Reuters)

A chimpanzee looks in the direction of a camera at the Gut Aiderbichl Sanctuary for Traumatized Chimpanzees and other Primates in Gaenserndorf, near Vienna, 17 September 2018. 34 former laboratory chimpanzees of former Austrian pharmaceutical company Immuno AG spend their lives at the Gut Aiderbichl Sanctuary for Traumatized Chimpanzees and other Primates since 2009. (Photo by Christian Bruna/EPA/EFE)

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)

Garbage pickers collect ride on donkey cart while looking for recyclable materials at a rubbish dump in the outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq, August 23, 2016. Despite its huge untapped oil and gas reserves and steadily rising oil output and revenue, 23 percent of the population live below the poverty line, according to the Ministry of Planning. (Photo by Khalid al Mousily/Reuters)

A woman doing yoga at a fountain, in downtown Stuttgart, Germany, Thursday, June 22, 2017. Weather forecasts predict hot summer weather as well as thunderstorms for some parts of Germany. (Photo by Marijan Murat/DPA via AP Photo)