Kaleen from Austria during the press meeting ahead of the concert Nordic Eurovision Party held at Berns in Stockholm, Sweden April 14, 2024. (Photo by Fredrik Sandberg/TT News Agency via AFP Photo)

A participant runs towards the waters of the North Sea during the annual New Year's plunge event in Ostend, Belgium, January 2, 2016. (Photo by Francois Lenoir/Reuters)

Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark) and George R. R. Martin attend the “Game Of Thrones” Season 8 NY Premiere on April 3, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic for HBO)

Revellers take part during the annual Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival on 5th Avenue in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., April 9, 2023. (Photo by Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)

British singer-songwriter Rita Ora has her knickers in a twist as she gets animated backstage at a music festival in Lithuania in the last decade of July 2024. (Photo by Splash News and Pictures)

A policeman stops a cyclist as demonstrators from Extinction Rebellion (XR) protest during the NATO Summit by blocking the A12 highway in The Hague, The Netherlands, 25 June 2025. The Netherlands, for the first time in NATO's history of existence, is hosting a NATO summit. (Photo by Sebastiaan Barel/EPA)

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)

Two journalists stand on the back of a horse-shaped statue on display to promote the art performance titled “Yu Ma” presented by Taiwan’s Paper Windmills Theater, during a photo call outside the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei on March 24, 2021. (Photo by Sam Yeh/AFP Photo)