A highland cow in Purbeck, Dorset shows off for the camera in the second decade of February 2023. (Photo by Kate Fry/Bournemouth News)

American singer and model Ciara in the second decade of March 2023 makes a very important phone call. (Photo by ciara/Instagram)

American media personality and socialite Kylie Jenner shows off her backside at “2 a.m.” in the last decade of March 2023. (Photo by kyliejenner/Instagram)

A Christian devotee participates in a re-enactment of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ on Good Friday in Chennai on April 7, 2023. (Photo by R.Satish Babu/AFP Photo)

Russian model Irina Shayk early May 2023 snapped a selfie before she broke “all the rules” at Met Gala. (Photo by irinashayk/Instagram)

Jamaica's Tissanna Hickling competes in the women's long jump qualification during the World Athletics Championships at the National Athletics Centre in Budapest on August 19, 2023. (Photo by Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP Photo)

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)

Photographers gather to take pictures of pilot Andre Borschberg (C) ahead of the take off of Solar Impulse 2-a solar powered plane- in Nanjing, China, May 31, 2015. The world's largest solar-powered airplane, Solar Impulse 2, took off from eastern China's Nanjing on Sunday to continue its round-the-world voyage. The Swiss-made plane left Nanjing's Lukou International Airport at 2:39 in the early morning, with former fighter pilot Borschberg at the controls alone for the entire 8,200-kilometer flight from Nanjing to Hawaii, the toughest leg of its marathon adventure. (Photo by Reuters/Solar Impulse)