A colonly of honey bees swarms one of the traffic lights on 41st Street and Broadway on May 1st, 2024. Bees would frequest the area, even finding residence in the flowerbeds rooftop of WeWork offices at 1460 Broadway in prior seasons. (Photo by Derek French/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

James Brady and a police officer are seen lying on the ground after being shot while the suspect John Hinckley Jr. is apprehended,at right, moments after the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan, Washington, DC, March 30, 1981. (Photo by Dirck Halstead/Getty Images)

People dressed as pandas walk in front of cheerleaders during the London's New Year's Day Parade event in London, Britain on January 1, 2024. (Photo by Hollie Adams/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)

North Korean youngsters sing and play accordions to entertain foreign visitors including United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, who visited Pyongyang, May 4, 1979. Visitors report music education in North Korea begins at an early age and is taken seriously by children and adults. (Photo by Peter Arnett/AP Photo)

A Palestinian man waves from his home as a clown and a man in a costume perform to entertain people amid concerns about the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on April 19, 2020. (Photo by Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters)

The original first mechatronic E.T. character from Steven Spielberg's 1982 film “E.T. the Extra Terrestrial” on display at Julien's Auctions in Beverly Hills, California on December 12, 2022, ahead of the “Julien's Auctions and TCM Present: Icons & Idols: Hollywood”. The auction will take place in-person and online on December 17 and 18. (Photo by Frederic J. Brown/AFP Photo)

Gunfire erupted at a Denver pot celebration Saturday, injuring two people and scattering a crowd of thousands who had gathered for the first 4/20 counterculture holiday since the state legalized marijuana... Photo: A woman smokes a large marijuana joint at the Vancouver Art Gallery during the annual 4/20 day, which promotes the use of marijuana, in Vancouver, British Columbia April 20, 2013. (Photo by Ben Nelms/Reuters)