To answer the part of your question about rotating, you may find the information in this Node tutorial useful, specifically using a Node as a “pivotNode” to rotate objects around a specific point.
https://wiki.jmonkeyengine.org/jme3/beginner/hello_node.html
But when it comes to the more advanced physics aspects you mentioned like intertia and damping, you would have to account for that on your own if you rotate using a simple Node.
Alternatively, you could try to use the Bullet physics library (https://wiki.jmonkeyengine.org/jme3/beginner/hello_physics.html) to do physically accurate rotations, although I never tried this in a case like yours, so hopefully someone with more experience could offer some input. I did find this thread in a quick search that may be useful if you go that route Rotating rigidbody object