According to the question, it is a an assumed fact that both populations have common variance, and not something one wishes to test.
Maximum likelihood estimators can be derived as usual either from the two samples separately, or by pooling them, in which case we will have an independent but non-identically distributed sample and corresponding log-likelihood, something that nevertheless creates no special issues. So, more than deriving the MLEs (which is straightforward), I would say that this is a good example in order to examine whether pooling samples ("unite and conquer"?) is more beneficial than keeping the samples separate ("divide and conquer"?). But "more beneficial" according to which criteria?
We will discuss them as we go along.
Note that we need both sample sizes to be larger than unity, $n_1 >1, n_2 > 1$, otherwise the variance estimator will equal zero.
If we keep the samples separate we will obtain
$$\hat \mu_v = \frac 1{n_1}\sum_{i=1}^{n_1}v_i,\;\;\; \hat \sigma^2_1 = \frac 1{n_1}\sum_{i=1}^{n_1}(v_i-\hat \mu_v)^2$$
and
$$\hat \mu_w = \frac 1{n_2}\sum_{i=1}^{n_2}w_i,\;\;\; \hat \sigma^2_2 = \frac 1{n_2}\sum_{i=1}^{n_2}(w_i-\hat \mu_w)^2$$
The MLEs for the means will be unbiased, efficient, consistent and asymptotically normal.
The variance estimators will be biased, consistent and asymptotically normal (see this post, which holds in general, even for normal samples).
Since we have bias here, it is an easy thought to turn to Mean Squared Error. The populations are normal, so we also have a finite-sample result:
$$\frac {n_i\hat \sigma^2_i}{\sigma^2} \sim \chi^2_{n_i-1} \Rightarrow \hat \sigma^2_i \sim \operatorname{Gamma}(k_i,\theta_i),\;\; k_i = \frac {n_i-1}{2},\;\; \theta_i = \frac {2\sigma^2}{n_i},\;\;i=1,2$$
Therefore we can calculate the Mean Squared Error (MSE) as
$$MSE(\hat \sigma^2_i) = \text{Var}(\hat \sigma^2_i)+\left[B(\hat \sigma^2_i)\right]^2 = \frac{2(n_i-1)}{n_i^2} \sigma^4 + \frac 1{n_i^2}\sigma^4 = \frac{2n_i-1}{n_i^2} \sigma^4$$
We turn now to the pooled-samples case.
It is easy to verify that the MLE's for the two means will be identical with the separate-samples approach. So as regards these estimators, pooling the two samples or not, makes no difference as regards the functional form of the estimators, or their properties.
But the variance estimator will be different. It is also rather easy to derive that
$$\hat \sigma^2_p = \frac{n_1}{n_1+n_2}\hat \sigma^2_1+\frac{n_2}{n_1+n_2}\hat \sigma^2_2$$
This is also a biased an consistent estimator, and also asymptotically normal, being the convex combination of two asymptotically normal variables.
Turning to the issue of bias and Mean Squared Error, since the two separate-samples estimators are independent we have that
$$\text{Var}(\hat \sigma^2_p) = \frac{n_1^2}{(n_1+n_2)^2}\frac{2(n_1-1)}{n_1^2} \sigma^4+\frac{n_2^2}{(n_1+n_2)^2}\frac{2(n_2-1)}{n_2^2}\sigma^4 = \frac {2n_1+2n_2-4}{(n_1+n_2)^2}\sigma^4$$
and
$$B\left(\hat \sigma^2_p\right) = \frac{n_1}{n_1+n_2}E(\hat \sigma^2_1)+\frac{n_2}{n_1+n_2}E(\hat \sigma^2_2) - \sigma^2 = \frac {-2}{n_1+n_2} \sigma^2$$
So the MSE here is
$$MSE(\hat \sigma^2_p) = \frac {2n_1+2n_2-4}{(n_1+n_2)^2}\sigma^4+\frac {4}{(n_1+n_2)^2} \sigma^4 = \frac {2}{n_1+n_2}\sigma^4$$
In order for sample-pooling to be superior in MSE terms we want that
$$MSE(\hat \sigma^2_p) < MSE(\hat \sigma^2_i), i=1,2$$
$$\Rightarrow \frac {2}{n_1+n_2}\sigma^4 < \frac{2n_i-1}{n_i^2} \sigma^4 \Rightarrow 2n_i^2 < 2n_in_1 - n_1 + 2n_in_2 - n_2$$
This reduces to the same condition for either $i=1$ or $i=2$, namely
$$0 < - n_1 + 2n_1n_2 - n_2 \Rightarrow \frac {n_1+n_2}{n_1n_2} < 2 \Rightarrow \frac 1{n_2} + \frac {1}{n_1} < 2$$
which holds, since both sample sizes are strictly higher than unity.
Therefore we conclude, that "unite & conquer" is the MSE-efficient approach here.
But we will lose something: if $n_1 \neq n_2$ the pooled-sample variance estimator does not give a Gamma finite sample distributional result, because it is the linear combination of two Gamma random variables with different scale parameters (different $\theta_i$'s). This does not result into a Gamma, but into a rather complicated infinite sum expression (see this paper). Which means that for conducting tests related to the pooled-sample variance estimator, we will have to resort to the asymptotic normality result.
Alternatively, if the difference between $n_1$ and $n_2$ is not large, and both samples have respectable sizes, we may even consider dropping observations from the larger sample in order to make $n_1 =n_2$ and preserve the Gamma distribution result.
You will not get the correct variance of the standard deviation by working out the variance of the variance and taking its square root $-$ that's the population standard deviation of the sample variance not the population variance of the sample standard deviation. You also have to be careful about what $\hat{\sigma}$ is!
At the normal, the MLE of $\sigma$ is $s_n$, the $n$-denominator version of sample standard deviation (rather than the Bessel-corrected $s_{n-1}$).
$$E(s_n) = E\left(\sqrt{\frac{n-1}{n}}s_{n-1}\right) = \sqrt{\frac{n-1}{n}}E(s_{n-1})$$
and $E(s_{n-1})$ can be found in Macro's answer here
So now
\begin{eqnarray}
\text{Var}(s_n) &=& E(s_n^{2}) - E(s_n)^2 \end{eqnarray}
and the rest is substitution (take care with the first term as well as with the second).
The variance result will have $\sigma^2$ multiplied by a constant (being a function of $n$ only).
Best Answer
Since this could possibly be a homework problem, I'm not going to write a full solution.