Dropping or replacing existing views

I'm attempting to execute a "DROP VIEW ..." or "CREATE OR REPLACE ...." statement from within my app and via the SQL Prompt on the Google APIs Console. The view does exist. In both the app and the SQL Prompt the system hangs for while (I'm guessing 60 seconds) and then reports "

Unable to execute statement". My SQL syntax is valid and it works perfectly on my local MySQL. Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks,

Dan