United States Navy captains

Ronald Ellwin Evans Jr. (November 10, 1933 – April 7, 1990) was an American electrical engineer, aeronautical engineer, officer and aviator in the United States Navy, and NASA astronaut. As Command Module Pilot on Apollo 17 he was one of the 24 astronauts to fly to the Moon, and one of 12 people to fly to the Moon without landing.
Before becoming an astronaut, Evans graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from the University of Kansas and joined the U.S. Navy in 1956. After receiving his naval aviator wings, he served as a fighter pilot and flew combat missions during the Vietnam War. In 1964 he received a Master of Science degree in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. Achieving the rank of captain, he retired from the Navy in 1976.
Evans was selected as an astronaut by NASA as part of NASA Astronaut Group 5 in 1966 and made his only spaceflight as command Module pilot aboard Apollo 17 in December 1972, the last crewed mission to the Moon, with Commander Gene Cernan and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt. During the flight, Evans and five mice orbited the Moon a record 75 times as his two crewmates descended to and explored the surface. He is the last person to orbit the Moon alone and, at 147 hours and 43 minutes, holds the record for the most time spent in lunar orbit. During Apollo 17's return flight to Earth, Evans performed an extravehicular activity (EVA) to retrieve film cassettes from the service module. It was the third "deep space" EVA, and is the spacewalk performed at the greatest distance from any planetary body. As of 2024, it remains one of only three deep space EVAs, all made during the Apollo program's J-missions. It was the final spacewalk of the Apollo program.
In 1975, Evans served as backup Command Module Pilot for the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project mission. He worked on the development of the Space Shuttle before retiring from NASA in March 1977 to become a coal industry executive.

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. His family name had been "Kvasnak", but this was changed to "Kosco" when his parents emigrated to the United States. Kosco graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1930, and earned a master's degree in weather aerology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1940. His dissertation, co-authored with John O. F. Dorsett, was called Winter weather types of the eastern North Pacific and adjacent coastal and island areas.Kosco spent much of the 1930s hurricane hunting in the Caribbean. In 1939 he married Bernadette Howley (1912–2013); the couple had three children. 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 December, the fleet was struck by Typhoon Cobra, which destroyed three ships. Kosco, aboard the USS New Jersey, reported a "tropical disturbance" 600 miles (970 km) to the east, and moving away from the fleet, when in fact it was a full-blown typhoon 200 miles (320 km) away and coming towards the fleet. Kosco later admitted to a board of inquiry that he had underestimated Cobra's strength, "basing his prediction on historical data about regional storms rather than relying upon current local observations." He was "mildly reprimanded". 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. He took what is believed to be the only color film footage of the ceremony. This was only released publicly in 2010.In 1946 Kosco participated in Operation Nanook in the Arctic. He was then chief aerologist and chief scientist in Operation Highjump in the Antarctic with Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd Jr. in 1946–47. He also led several other polar expeditions, collecting specimens for the Smithsonian Institution. 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.

Elbert Scott McCuskey (1915–1997) was a World War II US Navy fighter ace. He participated in the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway, for which he was awarded two Navy Crosses, one for each battle. By the end of the war, he was credited with 13+1⁄2 aerial victories.