Models wait backstage before the opening show for China Fashion Week, featuring Finnish outdoor gear brand Halti, in Beijing, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (Photo by Ng Han Guan/AP Photo)

Newly commissioned officers toss their hats during the US Coast Guard Academy's 144th Commencement in New London, Connecticut, on May 21, 2025. (Photo by Joseph Prezioso/AFP Photo)

A Taliban fighter poses for a picture holding a flower before offering Friday noon prayers in Kabul, Afghanistan on October 1, 2021. (Photo by Bulent Kilic/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)

Players perform during a game at the first Bubble Soccer tournament in Hitzkirch, near Lucerne, Switzerland, June 27, 2015. Bubble Soccer, also known as Zorb Soccer, is becoming increasingly popular around the world. The game is a recreation of playing soccer whilst encased in an inflated zorb which covers the players upper-body and head. (Photo by Urs Flueeler/EPA)

The mother (2nd R) of missing firefighter Xue Ning is helped by other family members as she cries outside the venue of a news conference after trying to demand for more information from government officials, following the explosions on Wednesday night at Binhai new district in Tianjin, China, August 15, 2015. (Photo by Jason Lee/Reuters)

“Sometimes i feel like photographers have uncovered a special secret. A crazy, amazing, and beautiful secret. The key to truly living. All i want is to be alive”. – Karrah Kobus

Photo: “All my life i lived in a bubble”. (Photo by Karrah Kobus)

King George V inspects the day's kill after a tiger hunt in India during his royal visit to celebrate his accession to the throne. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images). 1911