The work described in this paper forms part of a programme on the local buckling of long thin flat-walled structures, such as integrally stiffened panels or corrugated core sandwich panels, with the individual flats subjected to combined longitudinal compression and shear. When buckling occurs, the line junctions between adjoining flats remain straight, but rotations occur about the junctions. These rotations vary sinusoidally in the longitudinal direction but, because of the shear, the rotations at the two edges of an individual flat are out of phase with each other. In order to picture the buckling mode it is essential to have at least a qualitative idea of the shape of the nodal lines in the flats. The analysis of this paper is entirely concerned with this problem.