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)

US actress Tiffany Haddish attends a photocall for the film “The Card Counter” presented in competition during the 78th Venice Film Festival, on September 2, 2021 at Venice Lido. (Photo by Yara Nardi/Reuters)

A young fan plays a virtual reality game during the first round of the US Open tennis championships, Monday, August 29, 2022, in New York. (Photo by Julia Nikhinson/AP Photo)

US-British actress Lily Collins arrives for the 2023 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 1, 2023, in New York. (Photo by Angela Weiss/AFP Photo)

A woman makes use of a still day on Inle Lake in Burma on January 16, 2020 by drying newly-dyed threads made out of lotus stems. (Photo by Sabina Akter/Solent News)

Workers lay out hundreds of umbrellas in neat lines ready for painting on May 26, 2022. The parasols are handmade using thick paper in Bogor, West Java, Indonesia. (Photo by Lisdiyanto Suhardjo/Solent News)

US model Bella Hadid poses as she arrives for the screening of the film “Rocketman” at the 72nd edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, on May 16, 2019. (Photo by Antonin Thuillier/AFP Photo)

Promotional staff dressed in outfits of animation characters use a mobile phone at the Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) 2015 in Beijing, China, April 28, 2015. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)