Gorillas at Royal Burgers’ Zoo, Arnhem, Netherlands, on November 28, 2013. (Photo by Vidi Photo/Startraks Photo New York)

1st prize in the People Observed Portraits Stories category. Carla Kogelman, the Netherlands. The photo shows Hannah and Alena, two sisters living in the rural village of Merkenbrechts, Austria. (Photo by Carla Kogelman/World Press Photo)

Jury member Nicole Kidman attends the Jury Press Conference. (Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)

A giant sinkhole in Guatemala City, on May 31, 2010. More than 94,000 were evacuated as the storm buried homes under mud, swept away a highway bridge near Guatemala City and opened up several sinkholes in the capital. (Photo by Casa Presidencial/Reuters via The Atlantic)

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)

Visitors pose for pictures under blooming cherry blossoms at a botanical garden in Nanjing, capital of China’s eastern Jiangsu province on March 15, 2019. (Photo by Reuters/China Stringer Network)

In this Tuesday, April 16, 2019, file photo, a visitor posing for a photo walks though azalea blossoms at Nezu Shrine during a day of mild spring weather in Tokyo. Nezu Shrine is one of the oldest shrines in Tokyo. (Photo by Eugene Hoshiko/AP Photo/File)

“Start your day with a good breakfast together”, 2009. “There was this trend of eating sushi from a woman’s naked body. So when I found the perfect papaya, I knew exactly how to shoot it”. (Photo by Pixy Liao/The Guardian)