The hull on a boat that carried Rohingya migrants for three months is seen at Langkawi island, in the Malaysia's northern state of Kedah, Malaysia, May 12, 2015. Thailand and Malaysia may set up camps and detention centers to shelter hundreds of refugees arriving on their shores, officials said on Tuesday, as a leading inter-governmental agency said about 7,000 boat people were still adrift in the Bay of Bengal. (Photo by Olivia Harris/Reuters)

David Nickerson, 28, competes dressed as artist Bob Ross, during the ZJ Boarding House Halloween Surf Contest in Santa Monica, California October 26, 2013. (Photo by Lucy Nicholson/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)

Family members and relatives of passengers on board the Twin Otter aircraft operated by Tara Air, weep outside the airport in Pokhara on May 29, 2022. A passenger plane with 22 people on board went missing in Nepal on May 29, the operating airline and officials said, as poor weather hampered a search operation. (Photo by Prakash Mathema/AFP Photo)

Soldiers, including two recruits who have brought some chickens, at Victoria prepare to board the train for the battle front. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Surfer Gary Clisby rides his foil board on a morning swell of the coast of Carlsbad, California on May 23, 2018. Harnessing the “foiling” technology more typically seen on racing catamarans in sailing's America's Cup, the surfboards appear to fly above the water thanks to a fin attached to the bottom of the board. (Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters)

People use a board to travel on a flooded street after heavy rainfall in Baghdad, Iraq, October 31 2015. (Photo by Ahmed Saad/Reuters)