Preliminary design XIII of Project 24 was the most interesting option for the Ministry of Shipbuilding Industry of the U.S.S.R. and the Shipbuilding and Armament Bureau. The battleships main armament consisted of three triple-gun turrets housing 406 mm guns. The weak point of all major projects of the late Stalin era was their anti-aircraft defenses. If the Project 24 ships had been completed, their anti-aircraft guns would have been replaced by the modern ZIF-75 and 2M-3 guns in the late 1950s.