According to enlistment data on the US National Archives and Records Administration AAD website, Tal Epps was born in 1920 in North Carolina and was a resident of Delaware County, Pennsylvania at the time of his enlistment in 1942. He had completed four years of high school, was employed as a sales clerk, and was single without dependents.
T/Sgt Epps first appears in flight records while the 500th Bomb Squadron, 345th Bomb Group was operating from Jackson drome in Port Moresby, New Guinea. His Record of Combat Experience, a document used to track his accumulation of points for determining eligibility to return to the US, lists 109 flights on which he accumulated combat hours. Archival documents list him on an additional three combat missions, for a possible total of 112 missions, which was almost four times the number required to leave active combat.
There are some mission detail discrepancies between the several data sources used to produce the map above. As a solution to present all the data without prejudice, the source for each target marker on the map is color coded to indicate the data source. White markers reference mission data found only on the Load Lists, yellow markers indicate mission data found only on his Record of Combat Experience, and black markers indicate mission data appearing on both the Load Lists and his Record of Combat Experience.
Not all documented flights are shown on the map, mainly due to no destination being given for local flights even though they accumulated combat points.
My thanks to Kelly McNichols for supplying the Record of Combat Experience and to Clint Roby for access to his Load List data.