The closest a young FED got to being a statistic was a training formation detail. There was me, the stude. and two instructors. One was leading, I was solo, and the other instructor was flying as No3 on Staff continuation Training. The SOP was that there would be a pairs take-off with the No 3 following a few seconds later. The SCT, No3, asked to do a vic take-off so this was approved. Normally the runway at Oakington was R/W 27 with 5,250 ft. available but the was a heavy crosswind so we were using R/W 36. I had not flown off that runway before but as the briefing went on there seemed to be nothing untowards with it.
We fired up and then came the long taxi around Cambridgeshire so reach the take off point. On a formation take-off the leader only uses 10,000 rpm so that his No 2 has some power to play with and as we rolled I had no problem maintaining position. Quick flicks of the eyes to make sure I was well on the runway, there were three of us across it and everything was going well; until we crossed the runway intersection with not an awful lot of speed on board.
Approaching R/W27 it is obvious that there is not a lot of real estate to the starboard of the runway which meant that at the intersection the end of R/W36 was pretty close. This was confirm by my leader suddenly accelerating as he wound on full chat. Not expecting this I dropped back slightly as did the No3 with the result that when we got airborne it was more of a swan than a vic.
I saw his wheels stop so I dropped my hand onto the u/c lever and cranked it up and at the same time he pulled his engine back to 10,000 so I was rapidly catching up. Something in my brain shouted "THAT'S THE HP COCK" so I moved my hand to the throttle and pulled off the power just as a tree went between me and the leader because R/W 36 was only 4,600 ft. long.
The was a bit of a post mortem. Both instructors had only been qualified for a few months and neither had read that R/W 36 was not to be used for formation T/Os.
The No3 eventually led the Red Arrows.