During the waning days of the Clone Wars, Anakin Skywalker, a Jedi Knight, was known to pilot an Eta-2 Actis-class light interceptor. Specifically, Anakin Skywalker piloted this interceptor during a critical mission: the rescue of Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine amidst the chaos of the Battle of Coruscant. Ultimately, the starfighter met its end, destroyed within the Separatist flagship known as Invisible Hand.
By the year 19 BBY, the Kuat Systems Engineering company had unveiled the Eta-2 Actis-class light interceptor; it was designed to be the successor to the Delta-7 Aethersprite-class light interceptor and its Delta-7B variant. Anakin Skywalker, replacing his Delta-7B, was among the initial Jedi to utilize this new starfighter and employed it extensively throughout the latter part of the Clone Wars. Similar to his treatment of his Delta-7B, he adorned it with a prominent bright yellow color scheme, supposedly as an homage to the Podracer he famously used to triumph in the Boonta Eve Classic during his childhood.
The Battle of Cato Neimoidia marked the debut of Skywalker's Eta-2, where he fought alongside his Padawan, Ahsoka Tano, who was flying her own Eta-2. During the conflict, a discord missile, launched from a droid tri-fighter, unleashed a horde of Pistoeka sabotage droids that attached themselves to his fighter and disabled it, causing him to lose consciousness. Tano instructed R2-D2 to land the ship on a nearby mountain plain, so that she could jump from her starfighter to rescue him. Tano succeeded just as Skywalker's starfighter went over the cliff to its destruction, but not before R2 escaped. The Eta-2 was recovered and repaired.
Following a message indicating that Padmé Amidala had disappeared and her vessel was located on Batuu, Skywalker, accompanied by R2-D2, journeyed in a new Eta-2 to find her. After locating the ship at the Black Spire Outpost, Skywalker and Mitth'raw'nuruodo, known simply as Thrawn, formulated a strategy to apprehend an attacker. Skywalker used another assailant's body and pretended to have suffered engine damage to his Eta-2. After landing, he was attacked by an Assassin droid but managed to destroy it. Thrawn would capture the assailant and found his freighter, which belonged to the Separatists.
Upon the Jedi Order receiving intelligence regarding the whereabouts of a Separatist supply storage base situated within an asteroid, Masters Obi-Wan Kenobi and Quinlan Vos requested that Skywalker and another Jedi Knight by the name of Akar-Deshu accompany them in securing the base and its resources. The four Jedi traveled to the base in their Eta-2's, engaging six vulture droids that were defending it. Skywalker, Kenobi, and Vos landed their starfighters at the base, while Desh returned to their Arquitens-class light cruiser to gather reinforcements.
Following their unsuccessful attempt to retrieve the supplies from the storage base, the Jedi High Council dispatched Vos, along with Skywalker and Kenobi, to spearhead an operation aimed at destroying a Separatist listening post located on the planet Vanqor. The trio journeyed in their Eta-2s, accompanied by twenty-four Aggressive ReConnaissance-170 starfighters. Upon arriving at the facility, they discovered it was deserted, as Count Dooku had evacuated all personnel before their arrival. Unbeknownst to the Jedi, Vos had divulged information about the operation to Dooku as part of his scheme to operate as a double agent in order to reach Darth Sidious and annihilate the Sith once and for all.
Skywalker piloted his Eta-2 during the Battle of Anaxes, where he contributed to containing the droid invasion. The Separatists would eventually gain the upper hand, due to Admiral Trench's access to a stolen algorithm extracted from Clone trooper Echo, which compelled Skywalker and the other Republic forces to enlist the aid of Clone Force 99.
After Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine was abducted during the Battle of Coruscant, Skywalker piloted his Eta-2 in an effort to rescue him, together with his master Obi-Wan Kenobi, who was flying his own Eta-2. During the engagement, a vulture droid launched four discord missiles at Skywalker and Kenobi. To evade the two missiles pursuing him, Skywalker executed continuous rolls with his starfighter, resulting in the missiles colliding with each other. However, the missiles trailing Kenobi deployed a swarm of buzz droids that latched onto his starfighter and began disabling its systems. Skywalker attempted to shoot the droids off Kenobi's starfighter, but ended up blowing off his port-side s-foil, much to Kenobi's displeasure. Skywalker then tried ramming into him to destroy the remaining droids and succeeded. However, one crawled onto his own starfighter. R2-D2 manged to destroy the last droid by electrocuting its central photoreceptor. Skywalker employed the starfighter's ion cannons to disable the Invisible Hand's shields, and the pair crash-landed inside the dreadnought's hangar bay. The starfighter was destroyed when the Invisible Hand's aft section, containing the hangar, broke off from the front upon entry into Coruscant's atmosphere due to the damage it had sustained in the battle.
Following his transformation into Darth Vader, Skywalker would begin utilizing a green Eta-2 Actis-class light interceptor as a replacement for the one he lost during the Battle of Coruscant.
Anakin Skywalker served as the pilot of the starfighter, also fulfilling the role of its captain. Skywalker's astromech droid, R2-D2, functioned as the ship's navigator and was responsible for repairs should it sustain damage during combat.