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Brilliant -- arrogant, some would say -- certain of himself and a whirlwind of energy, McNamara was a key member of president John F. Kennedy's cabinet, a team famously described as "The Best and the Brightest" in author David Halberstam's seminal book on the Vietnam war.
But in later years McNamara came to regret his Vietnam role, although he remained silent until the publication of his controversial 1995 memoirs "In Retrospect: The Tragedies and Lessons of Vietnam."
Top US officials "who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation," McNamara wrote.
"We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why."
But his term as defense secretary did not start out that way, when Kennedy asked McNamara, then 44, to be his defense secretary soon after the young president was elected.
"I don't object to its being called McNamara's war," he wrote of Vietnam in 1964. "I think it is a very important war and I am pleased to be identified with it and do whatever I can to win it."
Under McNamara's watch the US military role in Vietnam escalated from a few hundred US soldiers advising South Vietnam's military to some 17,000 by 1964.
And US involvement in the war escalated even more dramatically following the Gulf of Tonkin incident that year, in which, based on suspect intelligence reports, the US alleged North Vietnamese torpedo boats had fired on two US destroyers.
President Lyndon B. Johnson -- who took over when Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 -- ordered retaliatory air strikes on North Vietnam, and the number of US number of soldiers sent to fight in Vietnam had risen to 535,000 by mid-1968.
By the time the war ended in 1975 more than 58,000 US soldiers had been killed, as well as more than three million Vietnamese from the North and South and around 1.5 Laotians and Cambodians.
But McNamara had already left as defense secretary, increasingly at odds with the administration's policies.
"Although he loyally supported administration policy," reads his official Pentagon biography, "McNamara gradually became skeptical about whether the war could be won" by sending in more troops and intensifying the bombing.
McNamara "became increasingly reluctant to approve the large force increments requested by the military commanders," the biography reads.
After years of clashes with Johnson and the top military brass, and facing a growing anti-war movement at home, McNamara resigned in early 1968.
Robert Strange McNamara -- the odd middle name was his mother's maiden name -- was born June 9, 1916 in San Francisco, California, the son of a wholesale shoe firm sales manager.
He studied economics and philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley, then obtained a masters degree in business administration at Harvard.
McNamara entered the Army Air Force in 1943. Weak eyesight prevented him from flying, so he worked at an office that analyzed the efficiency of US bombing raids.
After the war he was one of 10 ex-Air Force statisticians that Henry Ford II hired to turn around his automotive company. The team, dubbed the Whiz Kids, turned Ford into the second most popular US auto brand.
McNamara shot up the ranks and become company president -- the first ever outside of the Ford family -- in November 1960.
One month later he accepted the job as Kennedy's secretary of defense.
In 1968, when he left the Pentagon, McNamara went on to head the World Bank and "shaped the bank as no one before him," according to the institution's official biography.
During his tenure, which ended in 1981, McNamara focused the bank on representing the needs of its developing member countries and aggressively sought funding for development projects.
McNamara "came to the bank brimming with energy, forceful, active, pushing to get things done. He brought with him the firm belief that the problems of the developing world could be solved," the biography reads.
McNamara also wrote or co-authored 11 books on topics that mainly focused on issues of defense and development, the most recent one in 2001.
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But in later years McNamara came to regret his Vietnam role, although he remained silent until the publication of his controversial 1995 memoirs "In Retrospect: The Tragedies and Lessons of Vietnam."
Top US officials "who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation," McNamara wrote.
"We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why."
But his term as defense secretary did not start out that way, when Kennedy asked McNamara, then 44, to be his defense secretary soon after the young president was elected.
"I don't object to its being called McNamara's war," he wrote of Vietnam in 1964. "I think it is a very important war and I am pleased to be identified with it and do whatever I can to win it."
Under McNamara's watch the US military role in Vietnam escalated from a few hundred US soldiers advising South Vietnam's military to some 17,000 by 1964.
And US involvement in the war escalated even more dramatically following the Gulf of Tonkin incident that year, in which, based on suspect intelligence reports, the US alleged North Vietnamese torpedo boats had fired on two US destroyers.
President Lyndon B. Johnson -- who took over when Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 -- ordered retaliatory air strikes on North Vietnam, and the number of US number of soldiers sent to fight in Vietnam had risen to 535,000 by mid-1968.
By the time the war ended in 1975 more than 58,000 US soldiers had been killed, as well as more than three million Vietnamese from the North and South and around 1.5 Laotians and Cambodians.
But McNamara had already left as defense secretary, increasingly at odds with the administration's policies.
"Although he loyally supported administration policy," reads his official Pentagon biography, "McNamara gradually became skeptical about whether the war could be won" by sending in more troops and intensifying the bombing.
McNamara "became increasingly reluctant to approve the large force increments requested by the military commanders," the biography reads.
After years of clashes with Johnson and the top military brass, and facing a growing anti-war movement at home, McNamara resigned in early 1968.
Robert Strange McNamara -- the odd middle name was his mother's maiden name -- was born June 9, 1916 in San Francisco, California, the son of a wholesale shoe firm sales manager.
He studied economics and philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley, then obtained a masters degree in business administration at Harvard.
McNamara entered the Army Air Force in 1943. Weak eyesight prevented him from flying, so he worked at an office that analyzed the efficiency of US bombing raids.
After the war he was one of 10 ex-Air Force statisticians that Henry Ford II hired to turn around his automotive company. The team, dubbed the Whiz Kids, turned Ford into the second most popular US auto brand.
McNamara shot up the ranks and become company president -- the first ever outside of the Ford family -- in November 1960.
One month later he accepted the job as Kennedy's secretary of defense.
In 1968, when he left the Pentagon, McNamara went on to head the World Bank and "shaped the bank as no one before him," according to the institution's official biography.
During his tenure, which ended in 1981, McNamara focused the bank on representing the needs of its developing member countries and aggressively sought funding for development projects.
McNamara "came to the bank brimming with energy, forceful, active, pushing to get things done. He brought with him the firm belief that the problems of the developing world could be solved," the biography reads.
McNamara also wrote or co-authored 11 books on topics that mainly focused on issues of defense and development, the most recent one in 2001.
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