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)

A Chinese woman wears a protective mask as she shops in a market on February 6, 2020 in Beijing, China. The number of cases of a deadly new coronavirus rose to more than 28000 in mainland China Thursday, days after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a global public health emergency. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Two women cry in grief after armed assailants in a motorcycle shot their loved one in a main thoroughfare on July 23, 2016 in Manila, Philippines. The victim was an alleged drug peddler a claim disputed by his wife and maintained her husband is nothing more than a pedicab driver plying his trade when he was shot in front of her. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte declared a war on crime and drugs after winning the presidential elections on May 9, 2016. President Duterte has recently been living up to his nickname, “The Punisher”, as Philippine police have been conducting night time drug raids on almost a daily basis. (Photo by Dondi Tawatao/Getty Images)

Actress Shae Mitchell arrives at REVOLVE Desert House on April 16, 2016 in Thermal, California. (Photo by Ari Perilstein/Getty Images for A-OK Collective, LLC.)

Vegetables, wood and charcoal are loaded onto the roof of a battered Peugeot on November 7, 2018 in Matadi, Democratic Republic of the Congo. From the port of Matadi to the capital Kinshasa, a 350 km road crosses the south-west of the Democratic Republic of Congo. (Photo by Junior D. Kannah/AFP Photo)

Thai LGBT community participates in Gay Freedom Day Parade in Bangkok, Thailand on November 29, 2018. (Photo by Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters)

A boy reaches for a ball on a creek clogged with plastic waste on April 15, 2023 in Caloocan, Metro Manila, Philippines. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)

#1: Superman. According to McAfee, 16.50% of Web searches for Superman led to sites with viruses and other malicious software. Pictured here: The Superman costume that was worn by Christopher Reeve in “Superman: The Movie” on display at Profiles In History in Calabasas, northwest of downtown Los Angeles, on July 19, 2012 in California. (Photo by Frederic J. Brown/AFP Photo)