A Taliban fighter jumps into the vehicle after praying at Deh Bori square in Kabul, Afghanistan on October 18, 2021. (Photo by Zohra Bensemra/Reuters)

Afghan boys play soccer in Chaman-e-Hozori park in Kabul City, on November 12, 2021. (Photo by Hector Retamal/AFP Photo)

A Western honey bee feeds off acacia pollen at an apiary in Nagyszenas, eastern Hungary, 25 April 2020. The preparation of the bees for the acacia bloom began two weeks later than usual this year; due to the late frosts, this season's yield of Hungaricum acacia honey is expected to be lower. (Photo by Tibor Rosta/EPA/EFE)

Several soldiers from the Spanish Air Force observe a Eurofighter EF-2000 fighter aircraft of the Spanish Air Force, as it flies during the Ocean Sky 2023 Military Exercise for advanced air-to-air training in the southern airspace of the Canary Islands, Spain on October 25, 2023. (Photo by Borja Suarez/Reuters)

Pilot Robert Johnson, with the Trojan Phlyers Flight Demonstration Team, flies a North American T-28 Trojan above Gary, Indiana, on Thursday, August 8, 2024 ahead of the Chicago Air and Water Show. (Photo by Tess Crowley/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service 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)

An Afghan boy walks past a destroyed Russian-made tank, in Kabul, Afghanistan on February 24, 2020. (Photo by Mohammad Ismail/Reuters)

An armoured vehicle surrounded by Chicago cops at the time of the American depression, 1933. (Photo by Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images)