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)

Philip Colbert poses in front of his artwork at The Gallery Hosu on March 31, 2025 in Seoul, South Korea. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images for Philip Colbert Studio)

Two journalists stand on the back of a horse-shaped statue on display to promote the art performance titled “Yu Ma” presented by Taiwan’s Paper Windmills Theater, during a photo call outside the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei on March 24, 2021. (Photo by Sam Yeh/AFP Photo)

Listed as endangered on the IUCN red list of threatened species, a humphead wrasse, or Napoleon fish, swims in an aquarium during an event in Tokyo's shopping district of Ginza on August 5, 2019. (Photo by Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP Photo)

People look at a skeleton couple kissing installation dubbed “Till Death Do Us Part” during a Valentine's Day event in Bucharest, Romania, Tuesday, February 13, 2024. (Photo by Vadim Ghirda/AP Photo)

New York Mets' Luisangel Acuña is introduced before a baseball game against the Toronto Blue Jays, April 4, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Photo)

Singer Beyonce arrives at TIDAL X: 1020 Amplified by HTC at the Barclays Center on Tuesday, October 20, 2015, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP Photo)

October winner. “A burst of the aurora borealis over Kirkjufell, taken in September 2016. This shot has been a holy grail for me and was finally captured after many trips”. MICK RYAN, JUDGE: Iceland is a hotspot for aurora photography and this composition of the symmetric, free-standing Kirkjufell and the trident waterfall is much-sought after. If you can time your visit when the aurora “kp” index is high and know the settings for nighttime aurora images, you may end up with a beautiful photograph like this. (Photo by DВ/The Guardian)