Salute!
The old attitude indicators definitely aligned to the cockpit floor in prolonged turns. The J-8 was standard in the USAF T-33, and last time I flew with one was in 1967. So we learned instrument flying using that thing before moving on. Funny, but T-37 at the time had a better indicator and we flew that one first.
J8
Once wings level using the turn and slip doofer and altimiter and trim for pitch., you could quickly override the plumb bob erection thingie by pulling the "cage" knob. Some folks even caged the thing on GCA or ILS once they had achieved a good descent rate. Then could simply center the pitch bar. This only worked for about 3 or 4 minutes, but whatthehell.
Reversing the turn when holding was not as good a procedure as briefly rolling wings level using the turn needle as described, then caging.
It wasn't until the advent of the inertial systems, and my 1972 checkout in the SLUF, that I finally flew with an indicator that did not precess or try to erect to "local level".
Gums recalls.....
P.S. For those that never learned "needle-ball-airspeed", that doggone turn needle has been around since Jimmy Doolittle flew first hooded flight with the Draper folks nearly a hundred years ago. The sucker does not sense "down". It senses turn rate by the forces on its gyro gimbal, and converts the rate to the needle deflection. I gotta tellya, I think all pilots should learn to crosscheck that old thing with the new stuff if it is still a basic gyro. Although I believe a RLG strapdown could also work to represent the same yaw/turn rates, huh? 'course, that old thingcould use vacuum or simple 12/24 volt DC to work perfectly.