If you're in a hurry and sufficiently desperate, you might try finding one of the old Revell kits.
Revell originally issued its
Essex in 1958. The scale was 1/538. (My source for all this is the bible on the subject, Thomas Graham's
Remembering Revell Model Kits.) For its day it was an outstanding product. This was the beginning of a second generation of ship kits for Revell - a large step forward from the primitive kits that came out in the early fifties.
It depicted the ship in her then-current state, with the hurricane bow and angled deck. Features included a sliding and folding deck-edge elevator, antennas made of wire (you got a length of it, pre-notched so it would snap off at the proper lengths), a couple of tow tractors, a "Tilly" crane (not, alas, named after me or any of my relations), and an air wing including Skyhawks, Crusaders, Cougars, and a pair of helicopters (with separate rotors, no less). The decal sheet, with its elaborate, colorful deck markings, was a little beyond my capacity (I think I was nine years old when I tackled it the first time), but I got a big bang out of building it. I remember swapping the planes from it with those that came with my Revell
Forrestal, which had been issued a year earlier.
The kit does have its down sides. The details are no longer state of the art, and I believe there are some problems with the shape of the hull. (There's a
Detail in Scale book about the
Lexington that reviews this kit in some detail.) The prominent housing for the escalator that runs from the hangar deck to the flight deck, for instance, is supposed to be flush with the outside of the island - and isn't. Depending on what your friend intends to do with it, and how high his standards are (most people who look at finished plastic models don't see the stuff we do), it might be acceptable for your purposes. I believe Gold Medal Models makes a set of photo-etched parts for it; that would help a great deal.
Revell re-issued the kit many times. Mr. Graham lists reincarnations under the names
Bonhomme Richard, Lexington, Oriskany (oops, Revell - she never got the angled deck),
Wasp, and
Hornet (complete with Sea Kings and a just-recovered Apollo 11 space capsule - about 1/8" long). Several of those names appeared more than once. I can't claim to have seen them all, but I have the impression that nothing changed except the aircraft complement. (One of the
Lexington reissues, for instance, showed her - sort of - in her training carrier configuration, and included some trainer aircraft.)
Renwall also did an angled-deck
Essex as part of its 1/500 series. My recollection of that one is extremely vague, but I think it was a bit simpler and cruder than the Revell version. I suspect it's a real collector's item these days. Renwall also issued a small series of 1/1200 warships; there was an
Essex that group as well. There also used to be two kits from Lindberg. I don't remember the scales, but one was about a foot long and the other was considerably smaller.
Those are the plastic versions I can remember. I know there have been several excellent resin ones, but they're pretty pricey.
Beautiful, important ships. A friend and I were musing over this subject the other night. We agreed that these are among the very few warships that looked at least as handsome - and maybe more so - after they got modified than they did originally.