Tedder took over from Charles Portal as Chief of the Air Staff on 1 January 1946. In that role he advocated increased recruiting in the face of many airmen leaving the service, doubled the size of Fighter Command and implemented arrangements for the Berlin Airlift in 1948. He was granted a peerage as Baron Tedder, of Glenguin in the County of Stirling on 8 February 1946 and received the American Distinguished Service Medal on 14 June 1946. In 1947 he delivered the Lees Knowles Lecture, which was then published as "Air Power in War". He moved on to become Chairman, British Joint Services Mission in Washington in January 1950 before retiring in May 1951. In 1951 Tedder accepted an invitation to chair the Royal Commission on University Education in Dundee which ultimately led to the creation of the Queen's College, Dundee as a college of the University of St Andrews. His son John would later be a professor at both the University of Dundee (as Queen's College eventually became) and at St Andrews.