The airframe must be strong, rigid, and durable, yet as light in weight as safety will allow. To reduce structural weight, sometimes the aircraft structure is allowed to postbuckle in shear, a condition commonly known as diagonal tension. Postbuckled design will be used to meet the aggressive weight goal. This paper is focused on the comparison between stitched and unstitched panels under shear loadings designed to reduce the weight of aircraft components. Finite element analysis was used to determine the critical principal stresses, strains, and shear stresses. The results from the finite element analysis were compared with the actual testing data. It shows that stitching the stiffener flanges to the skin increases the shear strength capabilities of the test specimen by 43 %. Moreover, a shear failure in the middle bay skin of the stitched specimen shows that the skin-stiffener delamination failure mode was eliminated.