Global heat transfer characteristics of submerged jet impingement boiling of a highly wetting dielectric fluid (FC-72) on a heated copper surface are presented. The effect of variation of the jet exit Reynolds number (Re) on boiling incipience, fully developed nucleate boiling, and critical heat flux (CHF) are documented. The jet exit Re is varied by variations of the jet exit velocity and the jet nozzle diameter for a fixed surface diameter. High-speed visualization is used to supplement trends observed in the heat transfer data. Scenarios of low and high incipience wall superheat are identified, corresponding to partially or fully developed nucleate boiling condition upon initiation of boiling. For the high incipience wall superheat scenario, the time of spread of boiling activity over the heated surface during temperature overshoot is found to be inversely proportional to the wall superheat temperature at boiling incipience. The incipient boiling wall superheat temperature is found to be uncorrelated with jet Re and jet diameter. A cumulative probability distribution function is used to characterize the onset of boiling with wall superheat temperature. At a fixed Re, CHF increases with increasing jet velocity and with decreasing jet diameter, indicating that the jet kinetic energy is a key parameter in CHF enhancement. The CHF data are compared with available jet impingement CHF correlations from literature on free surface and confined jets. The free surface jet CHF correlation by Monde and Katto (1978) [1] is seen to best capture the experimental data trends for Re greater than 4000. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.