French confidence exceeded French naval readiness

Where would the French Navy rank in readiness at the start of the Second World War?

Around the third or fourth tier, despite a tendency to regard itself as a first-tier force.

The French Navy receives a third- or fourth-tier rating on the same informal scale used for the other wartime fleets. That rating is contrasted with a belief that it belonged in tier one. The criticism concerns the gap between confidence and assessed readiness.