This material comprises some additional thoughts on the item I wrote at the start of this thread, I am someone who is not so much interested in the
how (eg the hoax claims made) but the
why (eg what inspired the HB to make the claims) of the Moon Hoax.
From an (admitedly sketchy) study of history there does seem to be need within humanity to 'explain away' extraordinary achievements, I do not for example posess any information on contemporary European reactions to the news that the last 18 survivors of Magellans' expediton had sailed so far west that they returned from the east, thus proving that the Earth was if not spherical, then at least cylindrical :-? . So the following examples will have to suffice for the moment.
In the Eighteenth century James Bruce visited the source of the Blue Nile in what is now Ethiopia. On his return his account of his travels was, to his dismay and anger, viewed as amusing fiction. It was not until 1868 and the British invasion of Ethiopia that the truth of Bruces account was accepted.
In August of 1858 the first TransAtlantic telegraph cable was laid to wild celebrations, when it failed less than a month later, claims appeared that the whole thing had been a fraud and that the messages supposedly sent via the cable had in fact been sent via ship in advance to create the
impression that the cable existed/was working. The laying of the second and third TransAtlantic cables in 1866 should have silenced the claims but when the first account of the project appeared in 1892, the author, son of one of the main backers of the project included a chapter devoted to proving that the 1858 cable was real.
Doubts about whether or not Peary reached the North Pole are still strong enough to see them
appear at the Museum of Hoaxes website. One also wonders if such claims would have been made about Admunsen reaching the South Pole had there not been British (Scott) and Japanese (Shirase) expeditions in the area at the same time.
In short it would appear that extraordinary claims advanced without the
appearance of verification attract claims of fraud on the part of the participants.
But the best parallel may be drawn between the Apollo Moon Landings and the TransAtlantic cable, both were major and risky technological projects carried out under the glare of the media and both were greeted with major celebrations when they succeeded.
But I suspect that rumors that these events were faked started shortly thereafter, in the case of the Moon Landings, Campbell's editorial written around September/October 1969, shows how the idea that it was filmed in a studio may have gotten started, rather ironically because it was
worse in appearance than contemporary Hollywood output (eg 2001:A Space Odyssey).
Finally, both events were accompanied by failure, in the case of the TransAtlantic cable, it stopped working less than one month of completion and in the case of Apollo there was a failure to follow up the achievement. In both cases these failures probably gave additonal impetus to claims that they had been faked.
In the first case (1858) these claims were relatively simple and didn't require much detailed 'explanation'. eg. "
They shipped a months worth of messages over the Atlantic to give the impression there was a telegraph cable across the ocean.".
In the second case the claims are more complex and it is this need for more detailed 'explanation' that might explain the delay between Apollo 17 (1972) and the first books/articles outlining the hoax claims in or around 1974.
I'd also like to thank DALeffler, for his post above which seems to suggest that this may in fact be how it happened.