DETROIT (Reuters) – Ford Motor Co said on Monday it would invest $50 million upgrading a Chicago facility to partially assemble hybrid electric SUVs and vehicles for police use, creating 450 jobs.
The plant currently modifies vehicles for police use. That work will be transferred to a nearby facility.
After retooling, the new production line will later this year start partially assembling hybrid versions of the Ford Explorer sport utility vehicle and the luxury Lincoln Aviator Grand Touring SUV.
It will also partially assemble the Police Interceptor SUV.
On Friday, Ford said it would lay off about 200 workers in September at a Canadian manufacturing plant in Oakville, Ontario, with more layoffs possible in January, because of slowing sales of the sedans that the plant manufactures.
Overall, U.S. new vehicle sales are expected to fall this year, although pickup trucks and SUVs remain more popular than traditional passenger cars.
Last week, Ford also kicked off talks on a new four-year contract with the United Auto Workers union, with job security, healthcare costs and the use of temporary workers expected to be major sticking points.
(Reporting by Nick Carey; Editing by Peter Cooney)
SAN ANTONIO — Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Richard E. Cole, the last of World War II’s Doolittle Raiders, passed away early Monday morning in San Antonio with his daughter, Cindy, and son, Rich, at his side, according to reports from family and friends.
Cole was 103 years old. Arrangements are being made for a memorial service at Randolph Air Force Base, and Cole will be interred at Arlington National Cemetery. He had been scheduled to be honored in Sarasota on April 7 but was unable to attend the ceremony after being hospitalized.
The Doolittle Raiders were group of 80 Army Air Force aviators who participated in a daring aerial raid on Japan during World War II, bombing seven cities just months after the Japanese had laid waste to American naval power at Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
Cole, though, was humble about his role in the historic raid, which was planned and led by Army Air Force Lt. Col. James “Jimmy” Doolittle of the United States Army Air Forces.
“I don’t think that the Raiders should be remembered any more than the millions of other people who took part in World War II,” he said during a recent interview at the Air Force Armament Museum at Eglin Air Force Base.
The Doolittle Raiders are woven tightly into the historical fabric of this area. For a little more than two weeks in March 1942, they trained at what was then Eglin Field for their improbable mission: launching stripped-down B-25 bombers off the deck of an aircraft carrier and flying hundreds of miles across the Pacific Ocean to bomb Japan.
Less than a month after leaving Eglin Field, on April 18, 1942, the Doolittle Raiders — all volunteers and none of whom had flown a combat mission — boarded 16 B-25 bombers on the deck of the U.S.S. Hornet in the Pacific to start their mission. Cole was in the copilot’s seat of the lead B-25, which was piloted by Doolittle.
Cole also was among the airmen who had to bail out of the the B-25s after the raid. Asked recently about his sharpest memory of the raid, after more than 76 years, Cole had a quick response.
“The thing I remember most is my parachute opening,” he smiled.
Cole was in the area last month, attending a ceremony at Hurlburt Field, headquarters of Air Force Special Operations Command, for a 75th anniversary commemoration of Operation Thursday, another piece of World War II history in which he was involved. Cole was among the aviators involved in the 1944 operation in the China-Burma-India war theater in which early American air pioneers worked alongside British special operations soldiers known as Chindits to extract British soldiers from the forests of Burma. The operation marked the birth of Air Commandos as part of U.S. military aviation forces.
B-25 bombers aboard the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, departing San Francisco bound for Tokyo, Japan
