Delta CEO Ed Bastian talks about the century-old airline's past and technology such as generative artificial intelligence that he sees shaping its future during a Consumer Electronics Show (CES) presentation at The Sphere concert venue in Las Vegas on January 7, 2025. Delta on January 7 marked a century of flying with visions of a future in which artificial intelligence and internet age partnerships make air travel fun and seamless. (Photo by Glenn Chapman/AFP Photo)

A tiger enjoys frozen food at Rome Zoological Garden “Bioparco” during a heat wave in Rome on July 2, 2025. (Photo by Tiziana Fabi/AFP Photo)

Ex-Playboy model Brittny Button (nee Ward) poses in sеxy photoshoot, 2022. The American sizzler, 31, married to British Formula One ace Jenson Button, shows off her fabulous physique in stylish photography campaign. The couple, who married in March 2022, have two children together. (Photo by Jean-Claude Vorgeack/Capture Media Agency)

India's Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel assists a dog to perform a stunt during the celebrations to mark country's Independence Day, in Chennai on August 15, 2025. (Photo by R.Satish Babu/AFP Photo)

A dog wears fake eyes while riding a motorcycle in Samut Sakhon, Thailand June 23, 2016. (Photo by Jorge Silva/Reuters)

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 Puffing Billy steam train hauled by locomotive 14A crosses the Monbulk Creek trestle after leaving Belgrave station near Melbourne, October 20, 2014. While the discovery of steam power 200 years ago powered the Industrial Revolution, the world long ago shunted most steam trains onto the sidings of history. (Photo by Jason Reed/Reuters)

Tank crew standing in front of M-4 tank, Ft. Knox, Kentucky, June, 1942. (Alfred Palmer/OWI/LOC)