In this paper, a novel direction of arrival (DOA) estimation algorithm using directional antennas in cy-lindrical conformal arrays (CCAs) is proposed. To eliminate the shadow effect, we divide the CCAs into several subarrays to obtain the complete output vector. Considering the anisotropic radiation pattern of a CCA, which cannot be separated from the manifold matrix, an improved interpolation method is investigated to transform the directional subarray into omnidirectional virtual nested arrays without non-orthogonal perturbation on the noise vector. Then, the cross-correlation matrix (CCM) of the sub-arrays is used to generate the consecutive co-arrays without redundant elements and eliminate the noise vector. Finally, the full-rank equivalent covariance matrix is constructed using the output of co-arrays, and the unitary estimation of the signal parameters via rotational invariance techniques (ESPRIT) is performed on the equivalent covariance matrix to estimate the DOAs with low computational complexity. Numerical simulations verify the superior performance of the proposed algorithm, especially under a low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) environment.