Relatives mourn over the shrouded body of Mohammad Abed, who is killed in an Israeli airstrike on a shelter in Gaza City, during his funeral in Gaza City, on April 19, 2025. (Photo by Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

American actress Monica Barbaro at the Willy Chavarria Met Gala after party co-hosted with Wayman and Micah held at the Mark Hotel on May 05, 2025 in New York, New York. (Photo by Lexie Moreland/WWD via Getty Images)

Revellers participate in a colourful “flour war”, celebrating the “Ash Monday” or “Clean Monday”, a traditional festivity marking the end of the carnival season and the start of the 40-day Lent period until the Orthodox Easter, in the town of Galaxidi, Greece, on March 18, 2024. (Photo by Louisa Gouliamaki/Reuters)

Norwegian tennis player Jenny Stray Spetalen arrives for the screening of the film “Le Comte de Monte-Cristo” (The Count of Monte-Cristo) at the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, on May 22, 2024. (Photo by Yara Nardi/Reuters)

A fisherman brings his catch ashore from the Deduru Oya Reservoir, where giant snakeheads have become an invasive species in Walpaluwa village, Sri Lanka, Thursday, October 30, 2025. (Photo by Eranga Jayawardena/AP Photo)

People pose for photos with scarecrow installations during the Scarecrow Art Festival at Huatuo Baicao Garden on November 22, 2025 in Bozhou, Anhui Province of China. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

Beau Blades poses for photo at Mulletfest 2025 Grand Final at the Chelmsford Hotel on December 06, 2025 in Kurri Kurri, Australia. Hundreds of mullet enthusiasts from across Australia and internationally converged at Chelmsford Hotel in the Hunter Valley for the Mulletfest Grand Final, where competitors vied for the coveted title of “Best Mullet of Them All” across multiple categories ranging from junior to extreme styles. (Photo by George Chan/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)