 Returning to port at Narvik, "U-703" was cheered by her victory, but she struggled to make further impressions during the year, as her two further patrols yielded only one victim, the British destroyer , which was fatally crippled by a torpedo near Convoy PQ 18 in September.Following her lay-over in the winter as her home ports of Narvik, Trondheim, Hammerfest, Harstad and Bergen were all frozen, "U-703" returned to the offensive, again attacking allied convoys in the Arctic Sea.Her first two patrols, in January and April were short and barren, but on the next two in July and August 1943 under her new commander Joachim Brünner, she cruised in Soviet waters in the Barents Sea and further east, catching a small Soviet armed trawler on 1 August, and larger Soviet merchant ship the next day, sinking the SS "Sergj Kirov" near Istvestij Island.