SWLing Post reader Nathan Woodruff is researching his late grandfather, a US Navy radio operator in WWII who later worked as a maritime radio operator for the United Fruit Company.

Family photos suggest his grandfather spent roughly six months, around 1947, working at the WBW coastal radio station in Burrwood, Louisiana — the former Tropical Radio Telegraph Company station that, according to most records, ceased operations decades earlier when United Fruit consolidated its coastal network.

Nathan’s key question: how long did WBW actually operate as a relay station? If WBW shut down in the 1920s or ’30s as records suggest, then either the family timeline is off, or a smaller facility carried on under that call sign (or a related one) into the post-war years. If you have any information about WBW, Burrwood, or Gulf Coast coastal stations operating into the 1940s, please leave a comment below. I’ll pass along anything useful to Nathan — and I’ve included the photo of the station from his grandfather’s album above.