I have seen that on many older aircraft. I always assumed that it was normal to a certain extent, but you should know better than I.

this is probably abuse, but many light s/m skins have elastic buckles on the ground that get relieved in flight often with cabin pressure.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

RB1952...

You are generally correct... these are standard BUFF 'beauty-wrinkles' due to gravity on all unpressurized B-52s... and often KC-135s.

Boeing's early jet fuselages tended to have closely spaced longitudinal stiffeners and widely spaced body frames, with very thin skins [often spot-welded to thin internal doublers to minimize riveting issues]... which saved weight but promoted elastic skin-wrinkles on the ground. Some internal webs are 'so thin' that 'high-time' cracking due to flexural buckling/tensioning is a genuine maintenance nuisance [and was generally predicted by pressurization fatigue tests].

NOTE.
'Jig-jacking' the airframe [jacking into a manufacturing jig-position]... or in-flight pressurization... generally relieves [smooths-out] a high percentage of these body wrinkles.

NOTE.
On-the-other-hand, early high-wing Lockheed transports [C-130, C-141, C-5] tended toward thicker/stiffer webs and body skins... so these rarely show wrinkles due to static gravity loads... and typically have fewer internal web cracks over their service life.

Regards, Wil Taylor

o Trust - But Verify!
o We believe to be true what we prefer to be true. [Unknown]
o For those who believe, no proof is required; for those who cannot believe, no proof is possible. [variation,Stuart Chase]
o Unfortunately, in science what You 'believe' is irrelevant. ["Orion", Homebuiltairplanes.com forum]

hey Will … don't make me 5 years older … please !

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

rb'57... dang, Freudian SLIP...

Regards, Wil Taylor

o Trust - But Verify!
o We believe to be true what we prefer to be true. [Unknown]
o For those who believe, no proof is required; for those who cannot believe, no proof is possible. [variation,Stuart Chase]
o Unfortunately, in science what You 'believe' is irrelevant. ["Orion", Homebuiltairplanes.com forum]

Although I could not do it now (64 years old this year) when I was 18-20 I spent two years crawling around inside those beautiful birds and thoroughly enjoyed (almost) every minute of it. I should note that I worked the H models, however, and the one in the photograph is a G model.

I still remember the way the hair stood up on the back of my neck when I was on the flight deck of a B-52H working on the avionics the day I saw my very first nuclear weapon travel down to the alert area to "cock" an aircraft for war. Thank God the war stayed "cold" because I never wanted to see those alert birds go for the real thing.

Nowadays I have at least as many wrinkles as the BUFF in the photo, and neither jig-jacking nor pressurizing me would make then go away!

At Kadena I crossed-paths with an older HS teacher, who 'sported' major hearing aids.

Finally one day I asked obvious question: 'what happened to cause his hearing loss?'

He kinda hesitated before he replied... I could see some pain flicker in his eyes.

He was a navigator on a B-52 mission over North Vietnam. At ~50,000-Ft, just after dropping their bomb load, a SAM detonated ~100-ft** under the jet just below the flight deck and forward bomb-bay. The sudden depressurization... blew-out almost everyone's eardrums and 'caused other injuries/pain'. Some mechanical systems went-down, but the BUFF held together and was flyable, so the crew kept it airborne to get away from territory they just bombed. They eventually landed the crippled jet at a divert base.

The entire flight crew lost their hearing [individually to greater/lesser extents] and he suffered sudden decompression injuries for weeks afterwards.

BUT... They were alive and they didn't have to eject over NVN!

He/most-of-the-other-guys never flew [missions] again... and their jet was scrapped on-site.

** SAM 'hit' was witnesses from a near-by BUFF. That crew could barely believe their jet didn't fold-up like a cheap suit... like others had.

Regards, Wil Taylor

o Trust - But Verify!
o We believe to be true what we prefer to be true. [Unknown]
o For those who believe, no proof is required; for those who cannot believe, no proof is possible. [variation,Stuart Chase]
o Unfortunately, in science what You 'believe' is irrelevant. ["Orion", Homebuiltairplanes.com forum]

Those wrinkles will buff out.

I am "this" far from red-flagging you, 3DDave.

So I thought it was a -52H. What am I missing? (I'm a youngster, you see...)

No one believes the theory except the one who developed it. Everyone believes the experiment except the one who ran it.
STF

Since there is a number on the plane "2584", it's easy to find information.

https://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/boeing-b-5...

http://www.rbogash.com/B-52/B-52_Top_Page.html

Comcokid is correct, but I determined it was a G model in a slightly different way. The tail profile (first OP photo) is the shortened version, which only existed on the G and H models. The A through F models had a taller tail which more closely approached an apex point. The G and H model tails always stand out to me by their profile.

Second, once it was down to a G or an H, then I looked at the engines. The OP photo aircraft has the older J-57 turbojet engines (see again first OP photo), but the H had the newer TF-33 turbofans with the oversize inlet cowls (see my photo of an H below). The TF-33 engine on the H is why the H models at takeoff power never created exhaust clouds of such starkly monstrous size and dark coloration as the J-57 engines did with water injection.

I got to tour Edwards AFB when I was in undergrad, and all of the B-52s we saw there had the same wrinkles. They told us it was caused by the thousands of pressurization/depressurization cycles the airframes had seen during service. You could look down the fuselage from the nose and see it wobble in, out, in out between each frame.