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I forgot about the Zonds - those could have easily formed the basis of the rumors as well, but those things were so dangerous, they were never going to use them, at least not before we got there. Heck, one of the Zonds even killed multiple people on the ground.

The Soviets, for various reasons, could not think and engineer like we could - when you look back 50 years, everything looks like it went smoothly, but the reality is that our engineers were constantly adjusting and redesigning things all the way up until '69. Apollo 1, while a tragedy, actually gave us the time and focus needed to get a lot of things right - I'm very convinced that if there had been no fire, and things continued at the same pace, that something bad would have happened later on.

And we had a lot of young engineers in the Apollo program - the average age was in the 20s. One of my few regrets - I graduated in the midst of the landings, and even had a waiver from the AF to join NASA, and pay back my scholarship (Vietnam was winding down as well), but I was tipped off by a friend working at NASA that there were going to be layoffs, and that I should follow the path I started. Still regret not joining NASA later on.

And we had Von Braun. He not only had the knowledge, he had the vision.

The Russians did have Korolev, and, if the Russian/Soviet mentality had allowed it, they would have made it much closer. But he was hamstrung, and, Did the best he could with the tools he had.