Armiger Jagoe was born in April 1921 in Okolona, Mississippi and moved to Gulfport, Mississippi when he was two years old. He had one older sister and their father was a banker. During the Great Depression his father moved to Washington D.C. to work for the Treasury Department, and the three members of the family who stayed behind all took jobs. It was a close knit family, and they wrote to each other every day. Jagoe went to college in Cambridge, Massachusetts and he was driving back from a ski weekend in Vermont when the Japanese Attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He decided that what was going on in the world was bigger than an education. Although he was already a junior, Jagoe admitted that he was a "lousy student," and the war gave him a chance to leave Harvard with his "grades low and head high." He had a pilot's license, and in December 1943 he volunteered to serve in the experimental Glider Corps. His motivator, Jagoe said, was revenge; he wanted to kill the enemy. He trained as a glider pilot in Tucumcari, New Mexico, and no sooner than he completed his courses, the Army abolished the Glider Corps. He didn't want to be a pilot so he signed up for the newly created position that combined bombardier and navigator, and trained at Kirkland Field in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

As a "bomb-igator", Armiger Jagoe was busy every second of a flight and thought it was a fantastic position. He was assigned to the 428th Bombardment Squadron, 350th Bombardment Group, 12th Air Force, and deployed overseas in May 1944, having traveled by air to Natal, Brazil; stopping in the Ascension Islands; and arriving at Dakar, Africa. From there he went to Naples and then Foggia, Italy, then to his base for a year on the island of Corsica, France. He lived in a tent, and flew off landing strips situated between the small village of Ghisonaccia and the sea. The men built an officer's bar where they "got dead drunk" after each mission. In this section he named and described the six men of his B-25 [Annotator's Note: North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber] crew, and their relative positions on the aircraft. Jagoe said they were "like brothers," and he was happy to report that they all made it through the war. He mentioned a book he has written that describes in detail the six missions he remembers out of the 72 he flew while he was in the Mediterranean. Their first mission was "duck soup," with no flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] or enemy fighters sighted. Not so his second mission, on which he was hit in the head and knocked out; when he came to, the plane was falling, he saw the ground coming up, and wondered what it would be like to die. The pilot was able to pull the plane out at about a thousand feet, and they made it back to base. He remembered covering a crippled aircraft and watching as four men bailed out. When an empty parachute followed them, all the men on his aircraft screamed: they knew that friends were going down with that aircraft. On another cold December [Annotator's Note: December 1944] morning, their squadron had crossed Italy going north to hit a port. Jagoe said he held breath when he saw six German Fw-190s [Annotator's Note: German Focke-Wulf Fw-190 fighter aircraft] headed toward them. Fortunately, six American P-38s [Annotator's Note: Lockheed P-38 Lightening fighter aircraft] came in and chased them. On another mission, Jagoe's worst, during the invasion of southern France, the Germans "shot the hell out" of the squadron and the pilot of another plane radioed that they needed a guide to the nearest hospital. Jagoe plotted a new route and the two planes headed for Corsica. They landed safely, but one man died that night. At the time, Jagoe considered it all in a day's work, but he doesn't like remembering it now. [Annotator's note: Jagoe chokes up.] In his view, the German fighter planes were not very effective on the whole; their squadron took more damage from flak.

While Armiger Jagoe was based in Corsica, he took advantage of every R&R [Annotator's Note: rest and recuperation] the Army issued him. During the 11 months he was overseas, he remembers visiting Rome, Italy, and southern France; and, after 50 successful missions, being allowed to go to Cairo, Egypt. He loved watching the belly dancers, and enjoyed touring the pyramids. After 70 missions, command said Jagoe had flown enough, and he was grounded. But within the week the Air Corps was "hard-up" for personnel, and he was back in the air for four more missions. All his flights were bombing missions, and Jagoe acknowledged that two were against German personnel at Casino, Italy. He didn't think of the targets as human beings, and has never regretted the necessary action. Then, because he wanted to keep flying combat, he signed up to go to the Pacific. He returned to the United States on the day President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] died, and joked that nobody could remember, after 16 years of Roosevelt's presidency, who the vice-president was. Jagoe said that when he returned "everyone was for the soldiers," and it was a wonderful feeling. He was back in navigation school for further training when, to his regret, the war ended. Jagoe said the atomic bomb didn't make too much of an impression on him because he didn't realize the impact it would have, but he experienced the mixed feelings of relief and regret at the war's coming to an end. If he couldn't be a bomber, Jagoe didn't want to stay in the service, and took his discharge as a first lieutenant on 31 October 1945 at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, D.C.

After he left the service, Armiger Jagoe went back to Harvard, but left after a week because he couldn’t sit in a classroom, and he “couldn’t care less” about a degree. He spent the next 30 years in the insurance business. Jagoe said the transition back to being a civilian was the toughest time of his life [Annotator’s Note: Jagoe breaks up]. He remembers going to sleep at night and hoping he wouldn’t wake up; it took him a long time to get over that. Someone gave him a model of a B-25 [Annotator’s Note: Mitchell-built medium bomber] for his office, and he couldn’t look at it without crying. He searched for a quiet place, and found a cathedral where he could sit and be calm. Jagoe said he “bluffed” his way through it, and after some moths he was himself again. His most memorable experience of the war was a mission on which he was the lead navigator for 26 ships. Once their bombs were dropped, he had an altercation with the bombardier who insisted he take over, and Jagoe felt the man’s actions might have saved his life. Jagoe said he was lucky in that he never had to bail out, nor did he ever experience a crash landing, and gives credit to the “amazing” B-25. In this section Jagoe explained the items he brought into The National World War II Museum for donation. Regardless of the pain, Jagoe said, it was a wonderful experience and he loved all of it.

Armiger Jagoe fought in World War 2 because he wanted to be part of the defense of America. His experiences in the war changed his life in "every way." It broadened him geographically and he found the comradeship extremely rewarding. It was a new way of life, and he had to fit in. Jagoe feels war changed the mentality of the country, making it "one in mind," and united in a wholesome way. He feels it important for there to be institutions such as The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana] that remind people of what the country was during that time, and maybe it will serve as a model for the future.