 During one of these, on 22 December 1940, she sank the small Italian motor ship "Antonietta", and, on the very next day, the 3,952-ton troop carrier near Sazan Island.After the German invasion of April 1941, together with the rest of the fleet, "Papanikolis" fled to the Middle East, from where she would operate during the next years, carrying out nine war patrols in total.Under the command of Commander Athanasios Spanidis, the former captain of "Katsonis", she participated in two patrols in the Aegean Sea in 1942.