Java Google App Engine and Google Cloud SQL running on local dev server

Question

I've been researching a solution to this all week and while there have been solutions to similar problems there are none that address and rectify this problem directly.

I have created a web application project using Google App Engine and Google Cloud SQL. Running the GAE application using the eclipse Google plugin and a local MySQL server the application works great.

When running the application from the command line using:-

sudo /opt/appengine-java-sdk-1.6.1/bin/dev_appserver.sh --jvm_flag=-Drdbms.server=local --jvm_flag=-Drdbms.driver=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver --jvm_flag=-Drdbms.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/twincam?user=root --port=7070 /home/ben/workspace/Twincam/war

I get the following:-

java.lang.IllegalStateException: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
at com.google.appengine.api.rdbms.dev.LocalRdbmsServiceLocalDriver.registerDriver(LocalRdbmsServiceLocalDriver.java:95)

I have the classpath referencing the mysql-connector.jar located in /Twincam/war/WEB-INF/lib/mysql-connector-java-5.1.18-bin.jar referenced by my user library as in the following .classpath file and directory structure :-

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<classpath>
    <classpathentry kind="src" path="src"/>
    <classpathentry kind="con" path="com.google.appengine.eclipse.core.GAE_CONTAINER"/>
    <classpathentry kind="con" path="org.eclipse.jdt.launching.JRE_CONTAINER"/>
    <classpathentry kind="lib" path="war/WEB-INF/lib/mysql-connector-java-5.1.18-bin.jar"/>
    <classpathentry kind="lib" path="war/WEB-INF/lib/gson-2.1-javadoc.jar"/>
    <classpathentry kind="lib" path="war/WEB-INF/lib/gson-2.1-sources.jar"/>
    <classpathentry kind="lib" path="war/WEB-INF/lib/gson-2.1.jar"/>
    <classpathentry kind="output" path="war/WEB-INF/classes"/>
</classpath>

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Update: I checked file permissions and all are set at the default 664 so I'm confident that this is not the problem.