British singer Rita Ora arrives for the Echo Award at Messe Berlin on April 12, 2018 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Andreas Rentz/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 infrared portrait from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope which shows generations of stars is seen in this undated NASA handout image released February 14, 2013. In this wispy star-forming region, called W5, the oldest stars can be seen as blue dots in the centers of the two hollow cavities (other blue dots are background and foreground stars not associated with the region). Red shows heated dust that pervades the region's cavities, while green highlights dense clouds. (Photo by NASA/Reuters/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian/Handout)

A three-month-old Sumatran tiger cub named “Bandar” shows his displeasure after being dunked in the tiger exhibit moat for a swim reliability test at the National Zoo in Washington, on November 6, 2013. All cubs born at the zoo must take a swim test before being allowed to roam in the exhibit. Bandar passed his test. (Photo by Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press)

A woman takes part in a demonstration against police violence during the recent rallies of opposition supporters following the presidential election in Minsk, Belarus on August 12, 2020. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)

Firls attend Sunday Mass at Sacre-Coeur church, in Port-au-Prince, Sunday, July 11, 2021, four days after President Jovenel Moise was assassinated in his home. (Photo by Joseph Odelyn/AP Photo)

Actress Olivia Munn attends the 2018 MTV Movie And TV Awards at Barker Hangar on June 16, 2018 in Santa Monica, California. (Photo by Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)

In this October 27, 1983 file photo, soldiers brandish captured AK-47 rifles from the windows of a civilian vehicle as they drive near Point Salines Airport in St. George, Grenada. In 1983, U.S. forces invaded the Caribbean island of Grenada after accusing the government of allying itself with Communist Cuba. (Photo by Doug Jennings/AP Photo)