In this paper, a structural damage identification method (SDIM) is developed to identify the line crack-like directional damages generated within a cylindrical shell. First, the equations of motion for a damaged cylindrical shell are derived. Based on a theory of continuum damage mechanics, a small material volume containing a directional damage is represented by the effective orthotropic elastic stiffness, which is dependent of the size and the orientation of the damage with respect to the global coordinates. The present SDIM is then derived from the frequency response function (FRF) directly solved from the equations of motion of a damaged shell. In contrast with most existing SDIMs which require the modal parameters measured in both intact and damaged states, the present SDIM may require only the FRF-data measured at damaged state. By virtue of utilizing FRF-data, one may choose as many sets of excitation frequency and FRF measurement point as needed to acquire a sufficient number of equations for damage identification analysis. The numerically simulated damage identification tests are conducted to study the feasibility of the present SDIM.