The technical performance of an integrated three-dimensional carbon ion pencil beam tracking system that was developed at GSI was investigated in phantom studies. Aim of the beam tracking system is to accurately treat tumours that are subject to respiratory motion with scanned ion beams. The current system provides real-time control of ion pencil beams to track a moving target laterally using the scanning magnets and longitudinally with a dedicated range shifter. The system response time was deduced to be approximately 1 ms for lateral beam tracking. The range shifter response time has been measured for various range shift amounts. A value of 16 +/- 2 ms was achieved for a water equivalent shift of 5 mm. An additional communication delay of 11 +/- 2 ms was taken into account in the beam tracking process via motion prediction. Accuracy of the lateral beam tracking was measured with a multi-wire position detector to < or =0.16 mm standard deviation. Longitudinal beam tracking accuracy was parameterized based on measured responses of the range shifter and required time durations to maintain a specific particle range. For example, 5 mm water equivalence (WE) longitudinal beam tracking results in accuracy of 1.08 and 0.48 mm WE in root mean square for time windows of 10 and 50 ms, respectively.