San Diego, CL-53, was an Atlanta-class antiaircraft cruiser and the second ship of the name. This is not the armored cruiser San Diego of the First World War. Bethlehem Steel at Quincy, Massachusetts, laid her down on 27 March 1940, launched her on 26 July 1941, Mrs. Percy J. Benbough sponsoring, and commissioned her on 10 January 1942. DANFS names Captain Benjamin F. Ferry as her first commanding officer.
She reached the west coast in May 1942, escorted Saratoga and barely missed Midway, and on 15 June began escorting Hornet. She supported the Guadalcanal landings in August and, in DANFS's words, was the unwilling witness to the sinking of Wasp on 15 September and of Hornet on 26 October. She screened Enterprise in the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal from 12 to 15 November 1942 and joined the raids on Rabaul on 5 and 11 November 1943. She escorted the torpedoed Lexington to Pearl Harbor in December 1943, then received radar, a combat information center and 40 mm guns at San Francisco.
She joined Vice Admiral Mitscher's fast carrier force in January 1944 and served with it for the rest of the war. DANFS lists her in Flintlock, the capture of Majuro and Kwajalein, and Catchpole, the Eniwetok invasion, from 31 January to 4 March 1944, during which the force struck Truk. She was at the Battle of the Philippine Sea on 19 and 20 June 1944, shot down two of nine attackers off Formosa from 12 to 15 October, rode out the December typhoon, and entered the South China Sea in January 1945. On 1 March 1945 she was detached to bombard Okino Daito Jima for the Okinawa landings, and she shot down attackers on 11 and 16 April.
DANFS says she was the first major Allied warship to enter Tokyo Bay since the war began, and that she helped in the occupation of Yokosuka and the surrender of the battleship Nagato. DANFS marks its own date for the entry, 27 August, with (sic). She returned to San Francisco on 14 September 1945, after steaming more than 300,000 miles in the Pacific. She was decommissioned on 4 November 1946 and struck on 1 March 1959. NavSource says she was sold for scrap on 3 February 1960 and broken up in December 1960. She earned 15 battle stars.