America in the 1970s: Texas. Motorcyclist loading his possessions onto a truck with the help of his friends in Leakey, May 1973. (Photo by Marc St. Gil/NARA via The Atlantic)

People walk among yellowish trees at Kolomenskoye Park during autumn season in Moscow, Russia on October 03, 2021. (Photo by Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

This handout photograph taken and released by Limex Images for Red Bull on February 6, 2019 shows France's Nicolas Ivanoff flying over the skyline prior to the first stage of the Red Bull Air Race World Championship in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. (Photo by Predrag Vuckovic/AFP Photo)

A participant dressed up in a costume attends the 2021 Prague Comic Con in Prague, Czech Republic, October 16, 2021. (Photo by David W. Cerny/Reuters)

An American white pelican takes flight on the island of Petatan in the municipality of Cojumatlan de Regules, Michoacan state, Mexico on February 23, 2024. The island becomes home to the pelicans during the winter, when they travel from the north of the United States and the south of Canada to the warmer waters of Lake Chapala in Mexico. The birds are a tourist attraction and people gather on the island's boardwalk to feed them and watch them fly. (Photo by Enrique Castro/AFP Photo)

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 homeless street child looks in the window of a car in Jammu, India, Friday, January 6, 2017. Some 800 million people in the country live in poverty, many of them migrating to big cities in search of a livelihood and often ending up on the streets. (Photo by Channi Anand/AP Photo)

A general view of atmosphere at the annual VOLT Festival in Sopron, 208 kms west of Budapest, Hungary on June 26, 2017. (Photo by Mudra László/Rockstar Photographers)