A woman dressed as a cleaning lady laughs during “Weiberfastnacht” (Women's Carnival) in Cologne February 12, 2015. Women's Carnival marks the start of a week of street festivals, the highlight of the event being “Rosenmontag” (Rose Monday), the final day of the carnival where mass processions are held. (Photo by Ina Fassbender/Reuters)

A historical re-enactor poses for a photograph in a living history camp as he prepares to take part in an anniversary event for the Battle of Bosworth near Market Bosworth in central Britain August 22, 2015. The Battle of Bosworth took place in 1485 during the War of the Roses between the Houses of Lancaster and the House of York. King Richard III was defeated by Henry Tudor marking the end of Plantagenet rule and the beginning of the Tudor dynasty. (Photo by Neil Hall/Reuters)

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 young girl plays on the glass bottom platform of the Oriental Pear TV Tower as she travels with her family on the second day of the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, also known as Spring Festival, in Shanghai, China on February 18, 2018. Some 287 million tourists travelled in China during the first four days of the week-long Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, up 11.1 percent from the same period last year, new data showed Sunday. (Photo by Imaginechina/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Kashmiri villagers inspecting a house damaged in a gun battle flee from it after hearing rumors of Indian army soldiers returning back to the site, which turned out to be false, in Kundalan village, some 60 Kilometres south of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Tuesday, July 10, 2018. Government forces fired at protesters Tuesday in Indian-controlled Kashmir, killing a teenage boy and wounding at least 120 more who had been trying to reach the site of a gunbattle in which soldiers killed two rebels, police and residents said. (Photo by Dar Yasin/AP Photo)

A soldier fires a rocket gun as Ukrainian soldiers in the Donetsk region, where the country's most intense clashes occur, attend intensive combat training by using both domestic and foreign weapons amid Russia-Ukraine war in Donetsk, Ukraine on May 08, 2023. Infantry is always prepared in a conflict where heavy weaponry like aircraft, helicopters, tanks and other heavy armored vehicles, artillery systems, and mortars are widely deployed on frontline. Combat readiness and experience training of the 57th Brigade of the Ukrainian army continues in Donetsk. (Photo by Muhammed Enes Yildirim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

People use large water guns to spray each other as they celebrate the annual Songkran festival in Bangkok, Thailand on April 14, 2025. Thailand celebrated the Thai traditional New Year, called Songkran in Thai and also known as ëthe water festivalí, on 13 April, with festivities going on on throughout the weekend. During Songkran, people celebrate the New Year by splashing water to each other as a sign of washing away sins and bad luck from the previous year. People across Thailand celebrate the New Year with parties and water related activities throughout the weekend. (Photo by Diego Azubel/Matrix Images)

A boy plays at a flooded street in front of a passing bus as tropical storm Fung-Wong battered the Philippine capital Manila September 19, 2014. Heavy rain in the Philippine capital, Manila, caused flooding in many areas on Friday, shutting schools, government offices and financial markets as a tropical storm made landfall to the north. Thousands of residents in low-lying areas were moved to higher ground, officials said, as flood waters rose quickly after the equivalent of half a month's usual rain fell in six hours. (Photo by Erik De Castro/Reuters)