During some emailing last night with Wynn I mentioned this thread and this was his reply about John.
"John Peck was an engineer at IBM as far as I can remember. I never heard he or Lew McF talk
about him being in the military. I visited him a couple of times at his home after I really got into the
hobby (probably sometime '64-'67 maybe) and watched him do some work on a plane - very meticulous as you might expect looking at the Barracuda and some others.
He talked me through my first full stunt pattern at the back of Bluegrass Field Airport in Lex.
when we had two circles there. I was flying a Magician with an upright Fox 35 (he recommended
that I covert to that for ease in starting, etc.). Later, he gave me the Barracuda so I would have something good to fly, as at that time I was conducting two swim practices a day in the summer and
going to meets often.
I think he got into RC toward the end of the '60s. I always got the feeling that while he was a
better builder than Lew, he could not out fly him and this bugged him."