A human male named Ekelarc Yong held the rank of lieutenant and was a skilled starfighter pilot. During the Galactic Civil War, he fought for the Alliance to Restore the Republic. As Gray Three, his callsign, he piloted a BTL-A4 Y-wing assault starfighter/bomber within Gray Squadron. He was a participant in the Battle of Endor, where the Alliance's objective was the destruction of the Galactic Empire's Death Star II superweapon.
Discovering they were ambushed, the rebels engaged the Imperial fleet at close quarters to prevent the Death Star's superlaser from targeting them. During the conflict, two TIE/ln space superiority starfighters shot down Yong's bomber. However, before his death, the pilot intentionally crashed his damaged craft into the bridge of an Imperial Star Destroyer.
Lieutenant Ekelarc Yong, a human male, was a member of the Alliance Fleet's Starfighter Corps, serving the Alliance to Restore the Republic in the Galactic Civil War. He piloted a BTL-A4 Y-wing assault starfighter/bomber as a pilot. In 4 ABY, when the fleet made the jump from the Sullust system to the Endor system to attack the Galactic Empire's Death Star II superweapon, Yong flew as Gray Three, his callsign, within Gray Squadron. Gray Squadron was a mixed starfighter squadron consisting of Y-wings, A/SF-01 B-wing starfighters, and RZ-1 A-wing interceptors, and was under the command of Gray Leader Horton Salm.
The Alliance believed their attack would catch the Empire unaware, assuming the Death Star's [shields](/article/deflector_shield], still under construction, would be inactive. However, upon arrival in the Endor system, General Lando Calrissian quickly deduced they were in a trap and aborted the initial attack run. Subsequently, an Imperial fleet engaged the Alliance, with a massive swarm of TIE/ln space superiority starfighters and TIE/IN interceptors attacking the rebel starfighters. The fleet then resisted the Imperial forces while awaiting the success of a strike team dispatched to the moon of Endor to disable the Death Star's shield generator.
After the Death Star demonstrated its operational superlaser by destroying the MC80 Liberty Type Heavy Star Cruiser Liberty, Calrissian ordered the Alliance forces to engage the Imperial Star Destroyers at point-blank range, thus preventing the Death Star from firing upon them. Yong, pursued by two TIE fighters, flew close to the side of one of the Imperial-class Star Destroyers. His bomber took hits from the pursuing fighters and started to lose control. Making a final, desperate maneuver, Yong deliberately crashed his damaged craft into the bridge of another Star Destroyer, dying in the resulting explosion.
Ekelarc Yong's debut was in the 1983 original trilogy movie, Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi. Filming of the Y-wing cockpit scenes for Return of the Jedi occurred at Elstree Studios on Stage 9 from March 2 to March 11, 1982. The character's chest pack included the humorous message "HELP HELD CAPTIVE AT ILM."
Within the current Star Wars canon, the character's identification occurred initially in 2014 via the StarWars.com Databank. However, the website mistakenly displayed an image of Gureni Telsij, another Y-wing pilot, instead of Yong. A card released in 2021 on the Star Wars: Card Trader app also perpetuated this error. The name of the character originated within the Star Wars Legends continuity, initially appearing on a "Battle Over Endor" action figure set manufactured by Hasbro in 2010. A news article from 2014 mentioned that Leland Chee was consulted due to the actor's Asian ethnicity, though the actor's identity was not definitively established. The article also raised the possibility of the actor being the same as Gureni Telsij.