Wasn't that part of the myth to keep people thinking it was a dog, because it's terrain following radar worked and you might as well play psych ops w/ the North Vietnamese and the Ruskies?
They were “state of the art” when I was in AFROTC. I remember going up to Plattsburg to sit in them. I thought they were pretty cool at the time.
But I also thought disco was cool too.
Not only TFR, but advanced onboard digital computers to track multiple enemy threats and determine which was the worst threat. Like onboard digital computers powered by super secret integrated circuit technology.
An advanced environmental system for the pilots who were comfortably seated side-by-side in an ejectable pod. There were no ejection seats. Everyone went or nobody went until the ejection system was fired. The pod had a large drone chute to bring it and its occupants safely down to earth. Of course if you were outside the envelope, no ejection was possible and survivability was limited.
New swept wing technology for in-flight reconfiguration which enabled loitering at low altitudes and speeds and then accelerating to Mach 2+. at higher altitudes to escape.
The TFR (Terrain Following Radar) system enabled the aircraft to fly under automated control at high speeds following the contour of the terrain to escape detection by enemy radar. Pilots used to flying by stick puckered while TFR was engaged but it worked.
So many subsystems were onboard for testing during development there was barely enough room to house them. This was a new generation aircraft and everybody wanted this and that to be developed and added.
Some did not work and this lead to the belief that the aircraft was or was going to be an Edsel. Somebody came up with an idea to use an Apollo chute to recover from an stall/spin. It was a good idea on paper but it didn’t work. Scared the $hit out of the test pilots and was dumped before testing could be completed.
I could go on but the operational F-111 was a great engineered and well tested plane. Later the FB-111 was really a good plane. Either could carry a large amount of weaponry for it’s day.