George F. Kosco

Captain George Francis Kosco (1 April 1908 – 11 June 1985) was a United States Navy aerologist and polar explorer.

Kosco was born in Ramsaytown, Pennsylvania, on 1 April 1908. He was a Slovak American: his father had come from Oľšov, and his mother from Plavnica.

Kosco spent much of the 1930s hurricane hunting in the Caribbean. Bob Drury and Tom Clavin describe him as a "handsome, athletic six-footer", while Buckner F. Melton Jr. calls him "a slightly stout moon-faced officer".

Kosco was assigned to Admiral William Halsey Jr.'s Third Fleet in early October 1944. In 1967, Kosco published an account of the incident coauthored with Hans Christian Adamson: Halsey's Typhoons: A Firsthand Account of How Two Typhoons, More Powerful than the Japanese, Dealt Death and Destruction to Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet.

Kosco was present at the signing ceremony of the Japanese surrender on the USS Missouri at Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945. This was only released publicly in 2010.

In 1946 Kosco participated in Operation Nanook in the Arctic. Kosco Glacier in Antarctica was named in his honor in 1962.

Kosco retired from the Navy in 1960. He died on 11 June 1985 at Bethesda Naval Hospital, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.