OK - that makes some sence, however, as I mentioned - the RX is seemingly fine. It appears as though the bad motor caused the fuse, which was on the battery pack itself, to go. And once I DID bypass it, the receiver got hot (which I was sure burned it out, but a nice heat sink may have save my bacon.).
All this comes off of the Estes Sky Rangers Blue Angles ROG Twin-Otter-looking airplane, which has seen a LOT of crashes (our 1st plane.) so it's not much of a surprise.

So my next question is - do most battery packs have these fuses? I'm tempted to start dissecting to find out, but hate to risk damaging them.