The stern of the stranded cargo vessel Rena grounded on the Astrolabe Reef is seen on October 20, 2011 in Tauranga, New Zealand. Salvage crews continue to pump oil off the ship in an effort to remove as much as possible before bad weather predicted for the evening threatens to break the vessel and release more oil into the sea. Over 300 tonnes of oil has leaked from Rena since it hit the reef on October 5. (Photo by New Zealand Defence Force via Getty Images)

Women grieves near a bodies covered by tarp at the site of a landslide in Xinmo village in Maoxian County in southwestern China's Sichuan Province, Sunday, June 25, 2017. Crews searching through the rubble left by a landslide that buried a mountain village under tons of soil and rocks in southwestern China on Saturday found bodies, but more than 100 people remained missing. (Photo by Ng Han Guan/AP Photo)

“Yunarmiya” (Young Army) All-Russia National Military Patriotic Social Movement Association members compete during the 7th military-patriotic game “Yunarmiya, forward!” dedicated to Victory Day at the Museum-reserve “Gorki Leninskie” in Gorki Leninskie, Russia, 29 April 2025. A total of 160 teams of Yunarmiya and military-patriotic detachments attended the games, each team consisting of seven people aged between 12 and 17 years old. The games are a continuation of the Soviet military-sports competitions for children and teenagers, “Zarnitsa” (since 1967) and “Orlyonok (Eaglet)” (since 1972). (Photo by Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA/EFE)

An indigenous woman kicks the ball during a Mayan ball game match in Tecpan, Guatemala on March 23, 2024. Dressed in shorts, girdle and uncovered torso, members of eleven teams from the Guatemalan indigenous departments of Chimaltenango, Quiche, Solola and Quetzaltenango, as well as one from El Salvador, commemorated the March equinox with a tournament of the ancestral Mayan ball game on Saturday. (Photo by Photo by Johan Ordonez/AFP Photo)

An athletes competes in a log carrying relay race event at Peruibe beach during the Indigenous Games, near the Tapirema community of Peruibe, Brazil, Sunday, April 23, 2023. Hundreds of Indigenous athletes gather this weekend in the south of Sao Paulo state to hold their version of the Olympic Games. They will compete for medals in archery, tug of war, athletics, Indigenous wrestling and other sports. (Photo by Andre Penner/AP 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)

Boat crew members train on the waters of the Tonle Sap River on the morning of the first day of the Water Festival on November 13, 2016 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The yearly three-day Water Festival is one of the most important holidays in Cambodia and celebrates the end of the rainy season and the start of the rice harvesting. The Festival also coincides with the Tonle Sap river reversing course, which it does twice a year. Approximately 2 million people are expected to attend this year's festival, during which 259 boats and nearly 20,000 oarsmen will participate in the races. After a fatal stampede resulting in the death of some 353 people during the Water Festival in 2010, it has been cancelled four times over the past five years, with weather used as an official excuse. (Photo by Omar Havana/Getty Images)

A koala named Lisa from Pappinbarra recovers from burns at The Port Macquarie Koala Hospital on November 29, 2019 in Port Macquarie, Australia. Volunteers from the Koala Hospital have been working alongside National Parks and Wildlife Service crews searching for koalas following weeks of devastating bushfires across New South Wales and Queensland. Koalas rescued from fire grounds have been brought back to the hospital for treatment. An estimated million hectares of land has been burned by bushfire across Australia following catastrophic fire conditions in recent weeks, killing an estimated 1000 koalas along with other wildlife. (Photo by Nathan Edwards/Getty Images)