Britain's Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock wears Union Jack socks as he leaves with Britain's Leader of the House of Lords Baroness Evans after a cabinet meeting on Downing Street in London, Britain on January 7, 2020. (Photo by Toby Melville/Reuters)

A drag performer dances at the end of the “Rally for Our Rights”, ahead of the 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court election, outside the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin, U.S., April 2, 2023. (Photo by Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)

Cosplayers take a break from the convention to check their phones and get coffee during “Anime Boston 2024” at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 30, 2024. The convention is organized by the New England Anime Society and celebrates all things Japanese animation, comics and popular culture. (Photo by Joseph Prezioso/AFP Photo)

An Iranian woman without wearing her mandatory Islamic headscarf flashes a victory sign as two head-to-toe veiled women walk at the old main bazaar of Tehran, Iran, Thursday, June 13, 2024. (Photo by Vahid Salemi/AP Photo)

Doctor Dvora Ancona wears a glove bearing writings against violence on women as she arrives to attend La Scala opera house's gala season opener, Giuseppe Verdi's opera “Don Carlo” at the Milan La Scala theater, Italy, Thursday December 7, 2023. The season-opener Thursday, held each year on the Milan feast day St. Ambrose, is considered one of the highlights of the European cultural calendar. (Photo by Luca Bruno/AP 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)

Jordan Spence and Dawson Stallworth watch waves come ashore as Hurricane Sally approaches in Orange Beach, Alabama, U.S., September 15, 2020. (Photo by Jonathan Bachman/Reuters)

A group of girls hit the town in York, United Kingdom on December 30, 2020. Revellers hit the streets for a final drink before being plunged into Tier 4 lockdown. (Photo by Nb press ltd)