A Donald Trump impersonator with a bikini clad model stops at a hot dog vendor near Trump Tower on October 25, 2016 in New York, as part of a performance art piece by British artist Alison Jackson. The event is to promote Jackson's new show, “Private”, in New York, which features staged photographs portraying the private lives of public individuals. (Photo by Timothy A. Clary/AFP Photo)

Jennifer Lopez Gets Loud for Hillary Clinton at Get Out The Vote concert on October 29, 2016 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Larry Marano/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A competitor poses on the catwalk during the Miss Bumbum Brazil 2016 pageant in Sao Paulo, Brazil on November 9, 2016. Fifteen candidates compete in the annual pageant to select Brazil' s sexiest female rear end. (Photo by Miguel Schincariol/AFP Photo)

A Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) female fighter's braid is pictured while she is carrying her weapon in Tal Samin village, north of Raqqa city, Syria November 19, 2016. (Photo by Rodi Said/Reuters)

A girl carries a rifle as she attends a rally by followers of the Shi'ite Houthi movement commemorating the death of Imam Zaid bin Ali in Sanaa, Yemen October 26, 2016. (Photo by Khaled Abdullah/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 visitor looks at pictures of French photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue (1894-1986), on July 1, 2013 during the 44thd annual Rencontres d'Arles photography festival in Arles, southern France. The event runs until September 22. (Photo by Boris Horvat/AFP Photo)

Pope Francis passes past a portrait of himself as he arrives to meet youths in Santo Tomas University in Manila, Philippines, Sunday, January 18, 2015. Francis is in the Philippines on Sunday, the final full day of a weeklong trip that also took him to Sri Lanka. (Photo by Alessandra Tarantino/AP Photo)