small pieces of metal and tubes were welded onto the outside of the casing, reducing the weapon's accuracy even further than its already non-aerodynamic design, but contributing greatly to the whistles and shrieks which it made when in flight. the noise was its most important effect, so that anyone attacked by a davidka mortar would hear the shell seeming to fall very near to them before bursting very loudly, increasing the fear factor. the arabs abandoned many strongholds during the war as a direct result of this visceral fear: one story relates that, having been told that many of the proponents and designers of america's atomic bomb were jewish (e.g., einstein and oppenheimer), the arabs thought that they were being attacked with atomic weapons and subsequently abandoned their homes. this was especially true in the liberation of safed.