Yes, an impressive piece of machinery. I remember Anders speaking of the very thing you mention. The outer F-1s could move. The rocket would not fight the wind, it would adjust its course by gimballing. Anders said it was like being atop a car antennae when it was whipping about.
Another impressive thing was the guidance and navigation.
Robert Zimmerman:
“The spacecraft had left a planet whose surface was moving at about 1,000 mph as the globe rotated. That planet was also cruising through space at 67,000 mph. The spacecraft was aimed at a moon moving at 2,300 mph relative to the earth, with an orbital plane that differed from the spacecraft’s. Each of these vectors had to be incorporated into Lovell’s and the ground engineers’ calculations so that they could aim Apollo 8 not at where the moon was, but at a point in space it would reach three days hence. And their calculations had to be accurate within four ten-thousandth of a single percentage point.
This was not unlike a person jumping from a speeding roller coaster and trying to catch a bullet shot past them as they fell.”
NASA's Apollo program managed it nine times. Rest of world, still zero.