Characters from Star Wars pose for a photocall to promote the release of Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace 3D at The London Eye on February 8, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Dave J. Hogan/Getty Images)

Nora Muaid stands in Zawraa Park on December 2, 2011 in Baghdad, Iraq. The park's 180-foot tall Ferris wheel opened earlier this year and is the second largest in the Middle East. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

U.S. Army soldiers from the 2-82 Field Artillery, 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, wait to load onto their armored vehicles as they prepare to convoy to Kuwait from Camp Adder in Iraq on December 7, 2011 at Camp Adder, near Nasiriyah, Iraq. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Ratko Mladic makes his first appearance at the International Criminal Tribunal on June 3, 2011 in The Hague, Netherlands. Ex-Bosnian Serb army leader Ratko Mladic will make his first appearance at The Hague war crimes tribunal after being declared fit to stand trial. Mladic was arrested a week ago after going into hiding for the past 16 years and is charged with atrocities committed during the Bosnian war. (Photo Serge Ligtenberg/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)

Revelers march in the Lower Ninth Ward during a second line parade marking the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2015 in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

A woman performs a dance during a demonstration for climate justice and against the war in Rome, Friday, March 25, 2022. Climate activists have staged a 10th series of worldwide protests to demand that leaders take stronger action against global warming. (Photo by Cecilia Fabiano/LaPresse via AP Photo)

Scarlett points at the huge ice sculpture of a bear during a Photocall for Magical Ice Kingdom at Hyde Park Winter Wonderland at Hyde Park on November 17, 2016 in London, England. It is the event's 10th anniversary this year. (Photo by Ben Perry/Getty Images)