A three-axis piezoelectric load cell was used to measure the local unsteady forces induced on cylinders placed in a cross-flow. In conjunction with this, a single hot-wire was used to traverse the wake at a fixed distance behind the cylinder so that correlations between the induced forces on the cylinder and the wake velocity could be calculated to provide insight into the character of the flow-induced unsteady forces. Experiments were carried out on both two-dimensional and finite-span cylinders at a Reynolds number of 46,000. For the two-dimensional cylinder case, substantial evidence was obtained to demonstrate that the strength of the vortex roll-up along the span was quite uniform. Consequently, the lift-velocity correlation along the span remained unchanged. On the other hand, there was a total lack of correlation between the fluctuating drag and the wake velocity, thus indicating that the drag signal was not quite periodic. In the finite-span cylinder case, the separated flow from the top edge of the cylinder was found to suppress vortex shedding along the span of the cylinder, destroyed its coherence and caused the wake flow to oscillate in the stream direction. This oscillation induced a significant fluctuating drag on the cylinder. Consequently, the fluctuating drag far exceeded the fluctuating lift and the wake velocity was found to correlate well with the drag and not with the lift. This correlation remained intact along the span of the cylinder. Finally, the rms fluctuating lift and drag forces were found to vary along the cylinder span, with the lift increasing and the drag decreasing as the base of the cylinder is approached; thus suggesting that a submerged two-dimensional region exists near the base of the cylinder.