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)

An Iranian girl walks at the Tochal ski resort, in north of Tehran, Iran on December 12, 2019. (Photo by Nazanin Tabatabaee/WANA via Reuters)

Two girls in cosplay dresses walk in the street in Beijing on March 27, 2017. (Photo by Fred Dufour/AFP Photo)

Girls bath inside a drum on a hot summer day at a field in New Delhi, April 18, 2017. (Photo by Adnan Abidi/Reuters)

A Bangladeshi girl plays on a swing, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, December 27, 2016. (Photo by Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters)

A girl takes pictures after opening ceremony at Shanghai Disney Resort in Shanghai, China, June 16, 2016. (Photo by Aly Song/Reuters)

An internally displaced Afghan girl plays near their shelter at a refugee camp in Kabul January 13, 2015. (Photo by Omar Sobhani/Reuters)

A girl sticks out her tongue during snowfalls on a street in Hefei, Anhui province February 13, 2014. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)