A man is silhouetted as he stands on a walkway in the sky lobby at the Chancellery, the seat of German Chancellor Angela Merkel (not pictured) in Berlin, May 7, 2014. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)

Rescue workers stand near dead bodies washed ashore in Ton Sai Bay in Thailand's Phi Phi island in this December 28, 2004 file photo. On December 26, 2004, a magnitude 9.15 quake off the coast of Indonesia's Aceh province triggered an Indian Ocean tsunami that killed around 226,000 people in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and nine other countries. (Photo by Luis Enrique Ascui/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 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 this August 1, 2014 photo provided by the National Park Service are male caribou antlers in the Oolah Valley, likely the result of a grizzly kill as he migrated south for the winter at the Arctic National Park and Preserve in Alaska. The nation's northernmost national park says its new management plan will have to consider the effects of a new industrial road to the mining district of Ambler, the first road that would be constructed within its Maryland-sized boundaries. (Photo by Cadence Cook/AP Photo/National Park Service)

A man prepares cookies at a small traditional factory for the Eid al-Adha, amid the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Kabul, Afghanistan on July 29, 2020. (Photo by Mohammad Ismail/Reuters)

A devotee throws a clay idol of Hindu elephant-headed deity Ganesh into the sea on the third day of the Ganesh Chaturthi festival, in Chennai on August 24, 2020. (Photo by Arun Sankar/AFP Photo)

Social distancing signs are pictured as models wear protective face masks before the show of designer Andres Sarda during the Mercedes Benz Fashion Week amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Madrid, Spain, September 10, 2020. (Photo by Sergio Perez/Reuters)