Cork Patrols carrier was thought to have tipped the naval balance in Japan’s favor, even if an overly timid Japanese commander failed to follow through with planned ground invasions The U.S Navy also lost a destroyer and a hugely important fleet oiler at Coral Sea, and suffered heavy damage to a second fleet carrier The Japanese canceled the Port Moresby amphibious invasion while losing a light carrier, one destroyer, and several small transports But two fleet carriers were badly damaged, and they lost many carrier planes and irreplaceable pilots The battle is usually counted as a technical victory for the IJN but also a strategic failure, because it stopped the momentum of the Japanese advance into the South Pacific Coral Sea also marked the end of U.S naval decline, if not yet the reassertion of U.S sea power It spared northern Australia from attack by Japanese bombers that would have based around Port Moresby Most importantly, damage to two Japanese fleet carriers subtracted those key assets from the coming battle at Midway in June Coral Sea was the first naval battle in history in which ships were never in sight of one another, with all damage done by carrier-based aircraft That was a portent of things to come in the Pacific War, which would see six battles between carrier fleets The outcome also changed the way carriers fought by revealing to each side that it relied on carriers that were hugely powerful ships, but also highly vulnerable to dive bomber and torpedo plane attack The Americans, in particular, responded by surrounding carriers with much thicker anti-aircraft screens CORFU See Mussolini, Benito CORK PATROLS Unofficial term for anti-submarine warfare sweeps of the Channel prior to the OVERLORD landings They were designed to stop U-boats from penetrating to Normandy by keeping multiple aircraft in the area constantly, each sweeping the surface with search radar to force U-boats to submerge and to find and fix their position Below the planes were destroyer patrols and six ASW Support Groups Cork patrols intercepted and sank or damaged 10 U-boats in the first five days of the landings Not one U-boat got through to attack the invasion convoys CORN COBS See GOOSEBERRY CORONET Code name for the planned Western Allied invasion of Honshu originally scheduled for December 1, 1945 See DOWNFALL; Potsdam Conference CORPO DI TRUPPE VOLONTARIE (CTV ) The Italian corps committed to the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) It totaled 75,000 men, of whom 49,000 served in Spain at the same time at the peak of its involvement It fielded 700 aircraft, 2,000 artillery tubes, and many ineffective tankettes It suffered about 16,000 casualties, 268