Marcantilan,
I may be able to help. From my fading memory, a 'Ripple 3' meant three lines on the flypro, each filled by an aircraft. Depending on the range at which the ASW screen was required (we're talking 'pinging' with active sonar here), this would generate two aircraft out on the screen, with the third aircraft outbound or inbound. When an aircraft had to be changed (either unserviceable or it ran out of hours) then we'd have to generate a fourth aircraft which would normally launch before the aircraft being pulled out of the 'ripple' returned. We always kept a 'Spare on Deck' (SOD) primed and ready in case one of the aircraft went U/S on the deck.
In 1982, shortly after we set sail for Ascension, our squadron was tasked to support not only a 'Ripple 3', but also an additional line for Surface Search. This line required more than one aircraft, as the aircraft taking over often had to launch before the other SS aircraft came back.
Oh, and all this was what happened at night. During the day, we normally got two or three additional lines for HDS around the fleet. We flew very nearly as many HDS hours as we racked up on ASW. Just to add an extra layer of spiciness, on INVINCIBLE during the day we were effectively limited to one deck spot, (Number 5, just aft of the island) as the runway had to be kept clear for the Sea Harriers at alert. As a result, our maintainers got fairly sharp at moving aircraft around quickly.
Hope this helps, best regards as ever to all those 'rippling' out there now.
Engines