David Inderwick Strangeways DSO, OBE (26 February 1912 – 1 August 1998) was a colonel in the British Army who helped organise several military deceptions during World War II.
After the outbreak of World War II, he was sent to France where he participated in a rearguard action while the British forces tried to reach Dunkirk.
Sent from the War Office in London to Cairo, he reported to General Sir Harold Alexander with deception plans designed to fool the Axis powers as to the time and place of the Allied invasion of North Africa.
The deception relied upon convincing the Axis powers that the massed landing craft were destined not for North Africa but to relieve beleaguered Malta.
[1] Strangeways left the Army in 1957[2] to attend Wells Theological College and gain Anglican holy orders.
Strangeways retired in 1981 and returned to England, continuing to serve as a priest in the dioceses of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich and Norwich.