I had a rather elderly RAF Jet Provost QFI do that to me, except that after flying a sequence of aerobatics whilst I was under the hood and looking down, iaw his brief for the IRT, he gave me back control halfway around a barrel roll, ie perfectly inverted. The turn and slip was perfectly centred and we were at 1G. As the altimeter showed a decrease I gently “raised” the nose, which made it rapidly worse. I pulled harder to stop the altimeter unwinding then realised that we were approaching almost vertically nose down. Without an AI I decided the best recovery at that stage was pull as close to the aircraft G limit that I could, 6.75 iirc (well, as he said, recover with minimum height loss…).
Good story Shy Torque. I had an almost identical experience except this was a dual Vampire. It was an instrument rating test. I was told to close my eyes. The instructor quite gently rolled inverted while pointing the aircraft towards an area of low visibility. I tried to peek outside during the manoeuvre then got disorientated. I pulled through while trying to recover on instruments and we went into a screaming dive. The instructor took over and recovered to level flight after we had lost several thousand feet.
He handed control back to me saying "Have another go, and this time don't try to look outside." This time the recovery was successful. I will be forever grateful for his actions - thanks for everything Flight Lieutenant Jim Rhind - RAF exchange pilot with RAAF Central Flying School.