This year Archibald Chrismas present.
https://www.amazon.fr/Apollo-Forgotten-Missions-David-Shayler/dp/1852335750
An excellent book which, to my knowledge, is the only one with the detailed planning of the lost Apollo 1 mission as it should have flown on February 21, 1967 (yes, every single minute and hour was planned in advance, from launch to splashdown).
Also Shirra testimony over the second Block I Apollo, number 014, to fly later in the year... and it was a piece of junk as much as the fatal 012.
Confirming AndyC conclusion, that the Apollo 1 fire was a blessing in disguise. for the record, it took 20 months (up to October 1968 !) to cure all the flaws, even in the Block II.
On top of that, the 20 months were not lost because Grumman engineers couldn't get a decent Lunar Module either. The LM basically was not ready until February 1969. and that was completely independant from Apollo trouble - it was just not ready by any mean.
LM-1, 2 and 3 were piece of junks, overweights, badly build, with 300 flaws found in June 1968 at The Cape.
In a nutshell this mean that, even without the fire, Apollo CSM would have flown in circles around Earth and the Moon without any possible landings
FOR TWO COMPLETE YEARS.
Apollo 1 (planned) 21 February 1967
Apollo 9 (flown) March 3, 1969
Two years. "
They could have flown more Apollo 8 lunar orbit missions" Sure. Except JFK had said
LANDING and NASA was so committed to it, when in August 1968 George Low got his "Apollo 8 lightbulb moment" he had to invent an alternate denomination for that flight profile - it just had never been imagined !
A-class unmanned Saturn & CSM testing
B-class unmanned LM testing
C-class Apollo 7
D-class Apollo 9
E-class intermediate, not flown (take the LM between Earth and Moon)
F-class Apollo 10 - dress rehearsal up to 10 miles from the lunar surface - DOES NOT LAND.
G-class first landing, Apollo 11.
Apollo 8 is nowhere to be seen ! It had to be called... C-prime. An extension of Apollo 7: CSM-only, but around the Moon, not the Earth.
E-class was to be intermediate step between Apollo 9 and Apollo 10. High Earth orbit, cislunar space, flyby, orbit - it gradually drifted into Apollo 10 territory until it was too similar, and canned.
A-class unmanned Saturn & CSM testing
B-class unmanned LM testing
C-class Apollo 7
C-class-
prime Apollo 8
D-class Apollo 9
F-class Apollo 10 - dress rehearsal up to 10 miles from the lunar surface - DOES NOT LAND.
G-class first landing, Apollo 11.