They'll tell you that they are there as part of a balance - balance of fear. If these pilots of a front-line Phantom Squadron in Germany can convince the other side that they and their aircraft are primed and ready to fight, then, so the theory goes, they may never have to. NATO is committed to deterrence; the aircrews stake their lives on it - because if it fails they don't expect to survive. When the exercise sirens sound across RAF Wildenrath, Jack Pizzey takes off with the aircrew for a nightmare preview of the Phantom that haunts us all - the Third World War.