An experimental investigation has been conducted to determine the effectiveness of base shield plates in reducing the drag of a rough circular cylinder in a cross flow at Reynolds numbers in the range $3{ imes}10^4{leq}Re{leq}10.5{ imes}10^4$. Three model configurations were investigated and compared: a plane cylinder (PC), a cylinder with a splitter plate (MC1) and a cylinder fitted with base shield plates (MC2). Each configuration was studied in the sub and supercritical flow regimes. The chord of the plates, L, ranged from 0.22 to 1.50D and the cavity width, G, between the plates was in the range from 0 to 0.93D. It is recognized that base shield plates can be employed more effectively than splitter plates to reduce the aerodynamic drag of circular cylinders in both the sub- and supercritical flow regimes. For subcritical flow regime, one can get 53% and 24% drag reductions for the MC2 and MC1 models with L/D=1.0, respectively, compared with the PC model. For supercritical flow regime however, the corresponding drag reductions are 38% and 7%.