I seem to not be alone in this.
No. 112: The Comet Failures
and many more.
I guess we would have to ask nevil to be sure. try your ouji board!
The linked article is a bit wayward with its facts and I very much doubt the connection to Rudolf. Apart from anything else it's not clear that the poem/book had reached the mass market at time No Highway was written.
Shute was not 'an engineer with De Havilland' by then although his early career in twenties included a spell at their Stag Lane works. He went from there to Vickers and then airships. After working on the R100 and abandonment of the airship programme following loss of R101 he co-founded Airspeed but parted company in late thirties. At the time it was majority owned by shipbuilders Swan Hunter. Only a couple of years later did they sell out to De Havilland leaving Airspeed as a division of the bigger company. After Airspeed he was able to live on his departure compensation and writing earnings until joining the RNVR at start of WW2 to work on various 'secret weapons'.
By 1948 he was again making his living solely as an author. He did though retain contacts at RAE and elsewhere including Professor Sir Alfred Pugsley who was working on fatigue.
No Highway is a good yarn but as much human story about the 'boffin' Mr Honey as about the science etc.
Shute's biographer John Anderson (Parallel Motion published by Paper Tiger in 2011) quotes Shute on the subject:
You think that was my own idea? Look I'm getting a little embarrassed about being hailed a prophet of metal fatigue. It really happened this way. Someone sent me a couple of technical papers by Professor Pugsley and he forecast the whole thing. I thought it was a fascinating idea for a novel so I wrote it. If anyone was the prophet for that book it was the Prof.
His full name was Nevil Shute Norway, professionally in aviation he was Norway. Shute as a given name was taken from further back up the family tree, the family name of his paternal grandmother.
He used it for his early 'hobby' writing so as not to impinge on his professional work with Vickers/R100 etc and it is the name by which he is generally known.