This is true. Another way to put it, though, might be this: "Throttle heading [and/or] pitch attitude and bank angle do need to change to maintain altitude and airspeed if you want your turns into the wind to look the same from the ground as your turns in the other direction look.

That's why planes do crash on "downwind turns," and why rc pilots have to be careful. The point we've been making is about why this happens, and it's not because the plane can somehow "feel" a wind in defiance of the laws of physics.

Try this yourself: On a day with a steady wind, take a trainer up, trim for hands-off flight, then put in a little aileron trim and up-elevator trim. Your plane should start turning, and if you get the trims so that the turns are level, it will keep turning, around and around, without the nose dropping in any direction. It won't fly in circles, because the downwind drift of the plane will stretch out those circles in a downwind direction. (This is like an earlier poster's example of flying ar RC plane from a hot-air balloon, but easier to arrange.)