Ziripot, a traditional figure stuffed with straw, is helped up during Carnival celebrations in the Navarran village of Lantz, on February 16, 2015. (Photo by Vincent West/Reuters)

A painter was drawing a lion head body painting on a model during the auto show on March 15, 2015. The local 2015 auto show was held in Xuchang Stadium in Xuchang, Henan Province, China. The exhibitors tried a variety of ways for promotion and attracting people's attention. Some exhibitors were giving gifts to the people scanning their QR codes and add them onto friends list. An auto company has invited young s*x underwear models and drew body paintings on the girls. (Photo by Xu Zhongxin/Sipa Asia)

An undercover police officer, who had been marching with anti-police demonstrators, aims his gun at protesters after some in the crowd attacked him and his partner in Oakland, California December 10, 2014. Police said more than 100 demonstrators marched in Berkeley, California, which has a history of social activism. Under cloudy skies, turnout was smaller than earlier in the week, when demonstrators in the area threw rocks at police and shut down a major freeway. (Photo by Noah Berger/Reuters)

French actress Frederique Bel arrives for the NRJ Music Awards ceremony at the Festival Palace in Cannes December 13, 2014. (Photo by Eric Gaillard/Reuters)

Laura Giombini of Italy reacts during the Women's Beach Volleyball preliminary round Pool D match against Jamie Lynn Broder and Kristina Valjas of Canada on Day 2 of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games at the Beach Volleyball Arena on August 7, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

Two three-month-old female white Bengal tiger cubs play with a zoo keeper in their enclosure at the Buenos Aires' Zoo, in Argentina, on April 17, 2014. Captive white Bengal tiger Cloe, gave birth to three cubs – two females and one male – on January 14, 2014. (Photo by Juan Mabromata/AFP Photo)

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)

Vultures gather to eat waste in Bica beach, on the banks of the Guanabara Bay, with the Sugar Loaf mountain in background, 500 days ahead the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro March 24, 2015. As part of its Olympic bid, Rio promised to clean up 80 percent of the bay for the games. But local government officials have already admitted that a cleanup by 2016 is not achievable. Despite millions of dollars of investment over the years, the bay still stinks of sewage. Sailors who visited the city for test events complained of a floating sofa and a dead dog in the water. (Photo by Ricardo Moraes/Reuters)