>The F-111 is one of my favorites. It does one thing VERY well (I
>wonder if in UF, they have some of them rigged for use on carriers),
>but it had its problems. They tried to make it do a number of
>contradictory missions, when in reality, it was best suited to deliver
>a lot of ordnance on target. It did that very well (I sometimes
>imagine what a F-111 carrying 36 500-pound JDAMs - enough to ruin a
>villain's evening, don't ya think). Trying to make it a fighter was a
>mistake.

The reason they tried to make it a fighter was because of that bane of the 1960's military's existence: Robert McNamara. Originally the Air Force and the Navy had two totally different design programs going, with the Air Force needing a bomb truck and the Navy needed a missile-packing carrier-based fighter. McNamara, in all his infinite "wisdom," decided "Well, perhaps they can combine the two and come up with a common platform." When neither service was willing to agree on the characteristics they both needed, he again overrode them and set up his own list and requested proposals. Then, to ensure he'd thoroughly screwed the pooch for years to come, even after Boeing's design had won over both the USAF and USN, he instead declare General Dynamics the winner with Grumman as subcontractor.

The only good thing to come out of the whole debacle is, when the Navy's variant of the Aardvark (F-111B) proved to be too heavy, they got Grumman to build them a brand new design based upon what they were looking for in a fighter. The result was the greatest fighter in modern aviation, the F-14 Tomcat.