Bechowiec - 1 Bechowiec ( aka Bechowiec - 1 ) was a Polish World War II machine pistol or submachine gun developed and produced by the underground Bataliony Chłopskie ( BCh , " Peasants ' Battalions " ) resistance organisation . It was designed in 1943 by Henryk Strąpoć and was being produced in underground facilities in the area of Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski . Its name was coined after the Bataliony Chłopskie organization members who were informally called " bechowiec " ( plural : " bechowcy " ) . History . The guns ' s designer was Henryk Strąpoć ( born 1922 ) , a blacksmith and self - taught amateur gunsmith in a village of Czerwona Góra , Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship . In 1936 – 1939 years he illegally built four semi - automatic pistols of own design . During the German occupation of Poland he became a gunsmith of the local Bataliony Chłopskie underground organization . In spring of 1943 he completed a working prototype of his own submachine gun , later named Bechowiec . He later improved the design with a help of Jan Swat , formerly working as a mechanic in metal works in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski . A headquarters of Opatów BCh district , lacking machine guns , decided to organize a serial production of the weapon then . It was possible thanks to a clandestine production of intermediate product s in a metal works in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski ( under a German administration ) . These parts were produced there and then smuggled by workers since October 1943 . A final construction was made in Strąpoć ' s village blacksmith shop , with primitive muscle - powered tooling . Barrels were made from scrapped WWI vintage rifles , but they had to be hand - cut and rebored to 9 mm caliber . First two submachine guns were completed in January 1944 . Until July 1944 , 11 were completed in Czerwona Góra and at least two in Jan Swat ' s workshop in Broniszowice . Some 20 were in production , but a closing front and more intense presence of German units caused a decision to stop a production and hide unfinished parts . The weapons were distributed among Bataliony Chłopskie and affiliated Ludowa Straż Bezpieczeństwa ( " People ' s Security Guard " ) partisan units , mostly in area around Opatów . There is only one gun still in existence , currently on exhibition in the Polish Army Museum in Warsaw . The next weapon with this name was Bechowiec - 2 , designed and produced from April 1944 by Jan Swat in Broniszowice , patterned after Sten . Design . A lack of experience of Strąpoć in machine guns ' designing and lack of direct patterns resulted in several original construction features , similar to semi - automatic pistol s , and hence the weapon is sometimes referred to as a machine pistol , in spite of a size and general layout closer to a submachine gun . The weapon had no stock and had quite compact dimensions . It used standard German 9mm Parabellum ammunition which could be easily obtained either by purchase from the German soldiers or through armed actions . Three or four last weapons used 7 . 62x25 mm Soviet ammunition , of growing popularity among partisans . The weapon used a slide , much like an automatic pistol and fired from a closed breech , which added to its accuracy in single - shot mode . It also had an internal hammer and an internal safety device , preventing from shooting with not fully closed breech . A breech could be brought back by pulling a transport belt , fixed to a slide under the barrel . The gun had a three - position external safety and firing mode selector . The weapons had a signature " S . H . w . 44 " on a left side ( Strąpoć Henryk , pattern 1944 ) and " B . H " on a right side . Production guns were painted black , only the surviving exhibit was later polished .