France before 1914 was full of small firms designing aircraft, a lot of them small and struggling to survive economically.
One of them was the de Brageas company - initiated by Frémont de Bragas, who produced some monoplanes. Although historians struggle to get information from archives, little seems to have surfaced till now.
This de Brageas monoplane - a trainer - had the distiction that the Russian army bought eight machines for use as an initial trainer. At least one was fitted with a four wheel undercarriage to prevent unneccessary damage during training.
Descriptions of initial training in Russia give that the de Brageas was not well liked. First flights consisted of taking off and flying dead straight at a height of 1 meter, as there was no instructor on board the would be pilot was all alone ....
As on the side of the machine is an identification of this machine, I madw an enlargement of it, whch can be quite clearly read.
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