McGruff's wilfull ignorance aside, the thread itself is still an interesting topic.
The Tiger's Claw is the problematic situation, from a grand-narrative perspective... it's the case where people who the WC2 concept intended to kill eventually found their way back via retroactive continuity.
The characters seen in Wing Commander II were suppoed to be the only ones who survived: Bluehair (on patrol), Angel (transferred to the Austin), Paladin (retired), Maniac (went crazy and sent home) and then the two visitors from the Austin. But since then we've had...
* Hunter (on furlough at the end of Freedom Flight, returned too late)
* Iceman (survived through the WC1/2 Ultimate Strategy Guide, explained later as part of the Prophecy backstory)
* Shotglass (Voices of War says that he gave a character a set of silver wings "after K'Tithrak Mang")
... to make matters worse, other characters have since been connected to the Tiger's Claw or invented specifically to have survived. We see "Vanderman" in Fleet Action, and then the Wing Commander Prophecy material says that Hawk served a stint onboard as a comm tech.
Another thing to remember, though, is that in the original game characters didn't have to 'die' at any one point. You could have Knight killed in action somewhere in the Vega Campaign and never see him again, and never imagine him being on the Tiger's Claw at the end...
The Concordia is less spectacular, because all of the characters left the ship *before* the story of her death was created. You may be reading End Run after Wing Commander III destroyed the Concordia, but it was written well before that decision had been made. It's not some trick to get arround accidentally killing Bear, Sparks, Doomsday and such (in fact, if not for End Run we wouldn't even know Bear had ever served as a Concordia pilot) -- he was someone they rescued from the Gettysburg in SO1. These characters were specifically 'given' to the novel line in '92-93, never to be mentioned again.
As for characters who actually died with their ships (or, at least, haven't appeared again), we have Knight, Halcyon, Stingray and Major Edmonds (I believe we know for sure that Halcyon is dead).