Many years ago in the military, I did a tour on the SeaKing simulator for my sins (between jobs). I was teaching a weeks worth of sorties for the FGN (German seaking pilots).
I distinclty recall watching them man up prior to start and the Captain hooked his dog tags over the E3C compass binnacle protruding from the centre screen above their heads.
I asked why?
He told me this story:
Several years earlier, the same two guys were doing an IF training mission near their base and were around 7000' in complete IMC.
They were old hands and knew the seaking inside out including its handling characteristics.
They were hit by lightning and lost ALL electrics. The only 'flying' instrument they had going for them was the standby AI which ran off the battery bus.They also lost auto pilot.
Their crash cards stated that flying off battery only - gave you around 20 minutes max before everything failed (electrically).
They immediately began a controlled descent to VMC - no instruments (except standby AI) and no radios.
During their descent, they lost the battery - so now they had NO electronic instruments, no radio AND no intercom.
Flying any a/c without any AI is nigh on impossible.
So the pilot took his dog tags off and hung them from the compass binnacle and used the "cup in bowl" compass as a very rough AI (spirit level) and used the dog tags as a fine tune AI.
If the tags leant right they would compensate and so on.
It meant they didn't exceed Vmax, or Vmin and they didn't exceed AoB and stayed relatively 'upright' until they broke cloud and landed.
How's that for improvisation!