Members of the Sydney Swans Football Club and LA Rams cheerleaders walk in the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade as part of Sydney WorldPride on February 25, 2023 in Sydney, Australia. The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade returns to Oxford Street in celebration of the event's 45th anniversary. The parade began in 1978 as a march to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York and has been held every year since to promote awareness of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered issues. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)

Activists participate in the Walk of Lesbian and Bisexual Women in Paulista Avenue, SP. The act was organized by the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) in São Paulo, Brazil, on June 2, 2018. (Photo by Cris Faga/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Two women wearing bejewelled bras kiss during the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras festival in Sydney, Australia March 4, 2017. (Photo by Jason Reed/Reuters)

A reveller dances during “Lou Queernaval” parade, the first lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) carnival in France, as part of the Carnival of Nice February 19, 2016. (Photo by Eric Gaillard/Reuters)

Participants take part in the 44th annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) in Sydney, Australia, 05 Ma​rch 2022. (Photo by Bianca de Marchi/EPA/EFE)

In this handout image provided by Perth 2011, HMB Endeavour, the replica of Captain James Cook's ship, is farewelled from Sydney Harbour accompanied by three Olympic class Laser yachts on April 16, 2011 in Sydney, Australia. The ship was farewelled from Sydney to start her circumnavigation of Australia, ending up in Freemantle where she will play a role in the Perth 2011 ISAF Sailing World Championships in December. (Photo by Richard Palfreyman/Perth 2011 via 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)