Doctor Boaz Zissu of the Bar Ilan University shows the inscription on a 2,000-year-old ossuary at the Rockefeller Museum on June 30, 2011 in Jerusalem, Israel. The Israel Antiquities Authority have confirmed the credibility of the ancient ossuary, otherwise known as a stone chest in which to store bones, as bearing the name of a relative of the high priest Caiaphas from the New Testament. Laboratory tests have come back saying that the inscription with the name of “Miriam daughter of Yeshua son of Caiaphas, priest of Maaziah from Beth Imri” is both “genuine and ancient”. (Photo by Uriel Sinai/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)

A boy wearing a Lebanon's Hezbollah military outfit and carrying a toy gun walks during the funeral of three Hezbollah fighters who were killed while fighting alongside Syrian army forces in Syria in Nabatieh town, southern Lebanon, October 27, 2015. The fighters names are Hussein Hassan Shreifie, Ali al-Akbar Mohamad Khashfeh and Mohamad Saeed Fawaz. (Photo by Ali Hashisho/Reuters)

An undercover police officer, who had been marching with anti-police demonstrators, aims his gun at protesters after some in the crowd attacked him and his partner in Oakland, California December 10, 2014. Police said more than 100 demonstrators marched in Berkeley, California, which has a history of social activism. Under cloudy skies, turnout was smaller than earlier in the week, when demonstrators in the area threw rocks at police and shut down a major freeway. (Photo by Noah Berger/Reuters)

South Korean traditional bow artisan Kwon Yeong-Hak works on a bow in his workshop in Yecheon-gun, Gyeongsangbuk-do, South Korea, 26 February 2015. Kwon Yeong-Hak still crafts his bows in the traditional way, carrying on a four-generation family business. The Gakgung bow, of which Kwon is one of the last remaining artisans, is unique to Korea, and is constructed with a variety of materials, including water buffalo horn, oak, bamboo and cattle spinal sinew. A ban on the import of water buffalo horns has put the Gakgung tradition at risk. (Photo by Jeon Heon-Kyun/EPA)

A female Syrian soldier from the Republican Guard commando battalion drives a tank during clashes with rebels in the restive Jobar area, in eastern Damascus, on March 25, 2015. The female battalion, which was created nearly a year ago, consists of 800 female soldiers who are positioned in the suburbs of the Syrian capital where they monitor and secure the frontlines with snipers, rockets and machine guns. (Photo by Joseph Eid/AFP Photo)

A woman waits at a polio immunisation health centre, in Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria, August 29, 2016. Nigeria's military has liberated large swathes of land from Boko Haram but a ride with an army convoy, all guns firing for fear of ambush, shows how far the northeast is from normality after a brutal Islamist insurgency that has displaced millions. (Photo by Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters)

In this November 7, 2016 photo, “El Menor”, a member of “Los Cainos” self-defense group formed by the Marval fishing family, holds a homemade gun before starting a night patrol to help protect fishermen from pirate attacks in Punta de Araya, Sucre state, Venezuela. Pirates are terrorizing the coastal state of Sucre, once home to the world's fourth-largest tuna fleet and a thriving fishing industry. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)