Experimental, bistatic, scattering measurements were made on two, fluid‐loaded, cylindrical shells in the frequency range of 2<ka<10. Data were collected for an empty shell and a duplicate shell stiffened with unequally spaced ring stiffeners and resiliently mounted, wave‐bearing, internal structural elements. The shells were ensonified by wideband pulses of spatially plane waves at bow incidence and the scattered field was measured by a synthetic array in the transition field regime. Time domain focusing is used to backpropagate the measured field to the shell surface. The specular contribution to the measured field is first estimated and removed to eliminate it in the backpropagated data. The resulting waveforms show the transient, dynamic, structural response of the shell, uncluttered by the specular wave and its sidelobes. The measurement array does not provide enough resolution to allow direct analysis of membrane waves traveling on the shell. Therefore, a forward‐modeling technique coupling a transmission‐line model of the shell and simulated annealing parameter estimation is used. This procedure provides estimates of wave speeds, decay rates, and reflection and transmission coefficients at shell discontinuities for flexural and compressional waves on the both shells. [The authors acknowledge NRL for acquisition of scattering data. Research supported by ONR.]